


The Desert and the Deer

by nahra



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Atmospheric, F/M, Fantasy, God(dess) of Death, Romance, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 06:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15285861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahra/pseuds/nahra
Summary: Shikamaru has no idea how long he’s been a death god. All the lives he’s taken have become a blur, the faces a haze. Until he’s sent to kill the wind witch Temari. She recognizes him for what he is and immediately invokes the Laws of Old, forcing him into a dangerous gamble that changes everything.





	1. Chapter 1

Shikamaru had resigned himself to being a god of death long before he was sent to kill Temari.

For exactly how long, Shikamaru wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember ever _not_ being a death god, and therefore couldn’t pin when he’d accepted it as part of himself. The little he did know was that after a few hundred, a few thousand, a few million times moderating and ensuing a person's death, it all became a blur anyway. Man or woman--it was all the same.

Almost. For he did, however, manage to abide by a single, personal exception: Shikamaru refused to kill children. _How_ he managed this, well, Shikamaru wasn’t sure.

Alas, Temari was no child.

She was likely eighteen or nineteen, if he were judging based on appearance, and there was nothing child-like about the way she stood now, against the kitchen counter, one hand over her mouth and a glass of water clutched in the other. She stared empty-eyed at the floor. It was just after three in the morning and Shikamaru had the vague sense that it would be an unnerving sight had he been capable of feeling unnerved.

Instead, he felt a distant irritation. Temari was supposed to be dead by now. And if he hadn’t been late to her designated place of death--a strip of road in the desert highway--then he wouldn’t be standing outside the kitchen window wondering about what she was doing in the lowlight of predawn.

He waved one hand. Shikamaru would rather not dwell. It was time to get this over with anyway.

From inside, Temari sighed. Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment before she pushed away from the counter, reopening as she stepped across the tiled floor. It was silent, too late for the early animals and too early for the late.

Her foot slipped and the world slowed. Temari fell sideways with a jerk, her glass falling from her hand as she searched the air for purchase. The glass shattered and pieces flew, strewn across the floor like stars inlaid in the night sky. The corner of the counter came into sharp focus. It was heading directly toward the girl’s temple, closing in like predator on prey, a shining beacon in Shikamaru’s line of sight--

His line of sight was cut off. For a moment, all he could see was Temari’s eyes as they locked onto his, in someway, somehow, seeing him.

It was highly unusual. Humans almost never…

His thought trailed off as the world reverted back to its usual speed. Without realizing it, he’d lost focus of his intent. He’d meant for the corner of the counter to connect with her head, killing her instantly. But in that moment when she’d met his gaze, he’d lost the intent, and so her head sailed past the mark. Uninjured.

She landed on the floor with a smack. Even without her hiss of pain, Shikamaru knew she’d landed on the glass that had shattered the precious second before she’d fallen. Blood blossomed dark as ink, leaking from beneath her arm.

“Fuck,” she swore.

A crash and bang came from elsewhere inside the house. Lights flickered on. Footsteps.

“Temari? Temari are you okay?”

A boy wearing cat-print pajama pants burst thought the kitchen floor. His hair was unruly, chin dried with drool, and the remnants of purple eyeliner lingered at the corners of his eyes.

“Don’t come in here,” Temari ordered, snapping in an even tone that made it hard to believe she’d hurt herself.

The boy paused, taking in the situation.

“I’ll get some shoes on--”

“No. Just go back to bed. Did I wake Gaara?”

The boy shook his head, hesitant.

“Are you sure--” he began.

“ _Yes_. Just go to bed.”

They boy lasted a few more moments before she shot him a glare hot enough to melt ice. He glanced at the blood on the floor again and then slowly backed out of the room.

Once he was gone, Temari let out a breath. The light in the kitchen flickered above. With some effort, she pulled herself to her feet, wincing all the while. Along one forearm, a thick piece of glass sat jagged in her skin. It glinted wickedly. She frowned before looking up.

Once again, her gaze locked with Shikamaru’s. Temari didn’t look away for a long while. Her face was unreadable. Shikamaru imagined this was what it would be like for someone to get under your skin, with nothing but a look as cutting as a scalpel.

Temari broke the silence.

“I invoke the Laws of Old,” she said, simple, as if ordering a meal.

Something akin to shock registered in Shikamaru’s chest, the gears in his head turning. Only one other person had ever invoked the Laws of Old. It wasn’t as if they were well known; they were ancient things that even he hadn’t thought about in an age. And even if someone knew of them, it wasn’t as if Shikamaru appeared as a death god. He looked like any teenage boy--maybe eighteen, nineteen, with a thin face and thinner limbs. It took a trained eye to distinguish him, even if only his target could see.

Unless...

Temari didn’t budge. And as her eyes bore into his, she repeated: “I invoke the Laws of Old. I demand to speak with my sentencer and executioner, the death god…” She trailed off, tilting her head slightly to indicate that Shikamaru should finish.

The magic took root. Around his ankles, he felt claws sink in, archaic, invisible talons that would keep him stuck to the spot until Temari had a chance to speak with him. Without meaning to, he struck the last nail in his coffin, uttering the finishing words to Temari’s demand, her spell.

“Shikamaru,” he said.

Temari’s jaw twitched. Her even breath hitched for the barest of moments, before she nodded. “The death god, Shikamaru.”

The talons become iron, and Shikamaru frowned at his now restricted movement.

Was that a shadow of a smile that flickered across her face? Before Shikamaru could decide, she turned away, obviously aware that she’d just trapped him under an unbreakable spell.

“I’ll be right there, I just have to clean up this mess.”

\---

Temari came out ten minutes later, balancing two glasses of water in one hand and a med kit in the other. By now, the sun was hinting at making an appearance--the distant sky had turned from black to cobalt, and the stars twinkling dim as they began to drown.

She hadn’t bothered to change, he noted, considering the cool of the night. Shorts and a tank-top seemed impractical. But he said nothing, only watched as she rounded the corner of the house to stand on the porch next to him. Blood still dripped down her arm, the glass not removed.

“Water?” she offered.

Shikamaru blinked at her.

“Death gods can’t consume food.”

“How unfortunate.”

She sat down unceremoniously, putting the glasses beside her and opening up the medkit. She motioned at him to sit down, and the magic holding him in place bent, allowing Shikamaru the freedom to kneel. For a moment, she was quiet, and he observed as she began to meticulously clean and pull out the glass in her arm with a pair of tweezers. Somewhere, there was a rattle of a snake.

“I don’t want to die,” Temari said, breaking him out of his reprieve.

Blood seeped out the wound as she removed the worst of the glass. Immediately, she replaced it with a damp cloth.

“Most people don’t.”

“Let me rephrase: I can’t die.”

“Decidedly untrue.”

“I can’t die because I have to take care of my brothers. So, if you could go away now, that would be great.”

Shikamaru paused and let her finish disinfecting the wound. With shaking hands, she reached into the medkit and brought out a needle and thread. “Come now, witch, we both know I can’t do that,” he said.

Temari looked up sharply, the shaking stilling as his words hit home.

“So you know?”

“Please. It took me a moment, but I recall only a witch would know the Laws of Old.”

The shaking returned, and Temari cursed as she missed, for the fourth time, the metal loop she needed the thread to run through. Shikamaru didn’t think. He simply reached over and plucked the tools out of her hand, ignoring the slight flinch as he did. With fingers still as the desert sand, Shikamaru looped and tied, twisted and returned.

“Ah,” was all she said, nodding as he handed the needle back. Her nose wrinkled. Clearly, she didn’t want his help.

For a little while longer, they sat in silence, Temari’s brows drawn together in concentration as she worked the needle through her skin, tugging and pulling the cut closed. Shikamaru felt it a futile effort, considering she would die anyway. What was a little cut on a corpse?

“I guess I’ll have Sakura check this tomorrow,” she said, coming to the final stitch.

Shikamaru voiced his question out loud. “Why?”

“Because I want to make sure I did this right.”

“You’ll be dead tomorrow anyway.”

“Says who?”

“Says the Law of Old. You may have trapped me until sunrise, but you haven’t stopped me from killing you, witch.”

“My name is Temari.”

Shikamaru sniffed. “I know.”

She finished tying the final stitch with a harsh tug, and looked up at him, eyes blazing.

“And how is that?”

In truth, he knew her name in the same way he’d known all the others: as if it were a fact of the universe, something as basic as the color of the sky, or the fall of rain. He told her as much. She snorted and the fire went out.

“Oh,” she said. “Is that so.”

Shikamaru said nothing more. The sky was lightening rapidly--they’d been out for nearly twenty minutes, and this close to summer, the sun was eager to crawl it’s way past the horizon.

“So, you’re really determined, then? You’re going to kill me?” Temari asked.

“It’s my job.”

“It could not be.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he repeated, and she blew air out her nose.

“Then I want to invoke another of the Laws,” she said, and caught his gaze for the second time. Again, something like shock registered in his stomach--another of the Laws? It was rare enough for even a witch to know the basic sunrise deal. Only the truly exceptional knew the rest. He stared at her.

“I know you death gods and your games. I demand the right to Gamble,” she said, and it felt as if something in the earth was stirring. Wind rose, sweeping, dramatic, carrying the first hint of the days heat on it. From afar, a bird called, a rock slid down the canyon cliffs, the snake rattled once more.

“That’s an extremely dangerous right to invoke. I suggest you--”

“ _I demand the right to Gamble._ ”

Magic curled around Shikamaru’s tongue and held it. There was only one thing he was allowed to say now. He waited, pressure building the longer he refused until, finally:

“What are your terms?” The words came in a cascade of reluctance.

The right to Gamble was the most dangerous of the three rights--of the right to Choose, to Consume, and to Gamble, it was also the one least invoked. While Choosing gave you the right to decide how you die, and Consuming allowed one to decide on a final activity before death, Gambling was the only option that gave those marked an opportunity to live. By making a bet, playing a game, or wagering against the death god assigned to you, there was a chance you could keep your life. However, if you lost, it meant a whole lot worse.

Temari stared at him, unwavering.

“I wager that I can bring someone back to life before you can kill me.”

It was as if she'd smacked him. “What?”

“I wager that I can--”

“No.”

“You’re not allowed to deny me.”

A sound made its way from the back of Shikamaru’s throat. He couldn’t recall having ever been at a loss for words. And yet, here he was. It took another full minute of the sun to rise before he formulated a response.

“And just who exactly do you think you can bring to life before I manage to kill you?” he said, surprised to find his tone dipped in scorn.

Temari smirked. “A deer.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

The sun finally cut past the canyon, rays running across the sand in flushing gold. The magic binding Shikamaru to the spot dissipated like burning fog, but in its place, new magic had formed. Now there was a deal weighing him down, a burden, a bother. A dangerous one at that. Sighing, Shikamaru extended his hand. This time, the Law didn’t make him do it--he simply strived to move past what was inevitable. “We have a deal, then?”

Temari moved to take his hand. Her fingers were dried with her own blood, calloused from years living among the sand and canyons. “A Gamble,” she said.

Her hand brushed his, and a jolt went through Shikamaru, from the core of his lingering soul to the tip of his bitter tongue.

It had been so long since Shikamaru felt anything at all--and now, suddenly, there were the remnants of surprise and irritation, nearly painful, even the whispers of them. With forced grace, he shook Temari’s hand, nodding to her that he understood. She stared back at him and for the first time, in the light of dawn, he realized her eyes were blue.

“A Gamble,” he repeated.

And so her deal was made.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late with the update, but you know how it is. You get to watching cowboy bebop and suddenly three hours have passed and you haven't posted the chapter. Whoops!

The heat of the day came deft as a fist; hard, fast, with little room to process the burn of it. Shikamaru wasn’t partial to the temperature, but then again, he was a god and could only feel the shadow of it. He figured he’d make do. He’d found a spot on the cliffside, anyway, and it had a perfect view of Temari and her brothers as they made their way down a narrow stretch of highway.

From this distance, he could see the tired wheels of their beaten convertible skimming the asphalt, the wind as it whipped angrily through the trios hair. They were slow to approach the town looming in the distance, though Shikamaru knew that was only perspective doing its job. They would be there in no time.

He flicked his wrist, frowning deeply. He’d told her that he couldn’t spare her brothers anymore--it was a part of Gambling.

In the distance, a dog snaked out in front of the car. Shikamaru watched as the realization ripped across Temari’s face.

 _Thump_.

Shikamaru raised his eyebrows. Temari hadn’t swerved in the slightest.

There was a brief moment in which the world went dark, and when it appeared again, it was from a different angle. No longer was the cliffside shading Shikamaru. Instead, there was the force of a topless car rushing across the desert at 50 MPH, the sun scraping directly, dull, against his skin. He turned to Temari, who hadn’t noticed him appear in the passenger seat of the car.

“You’re heartless,” he said.

Or maybe she had noticed him. Without so much as a start, she replied, cutting as ever:

“I’m not dead.”

Shikamaru shrugged. She had a point.

He turned to glance at her brothers, who couldn’t see him or hear Temari over the sound of the wind. Kankuro was slouched in his seat, head back and eyes closed. It was as if he was trying to sleep in the middle of a thunderstorm. The other boy, smaller than the other two by far, had his chin resting on his knees. There were black rings around his eyes and his brows were practically non-existent, despite being drawn in some angry concentration. He glared at both nothing and everything.

Five minutes passed and they reached the town. Once they did, Temari slowed, and took a sharp turn near the beginning of the main street. Instead of following the paved path through rundown buildings, built of cool stone and festering wood, she followed the turn to a dingy one room schoolhouse.

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t know those still existed,” he said.

Temari ignored him now that the wind had died and her brothers could hear. She waved to them as they clamored out the car, Gaara slamming his door and Kankuro opting to not open his at all. He jumped from the convertible and gave Temari a quick salute. Gaara didn’t bother to look in her direction.

“See you guys at 3,” she muttered, and then put the car into drive.

They pulled away from the building and turned 180, back towards mainstreet. For a while, they sat in silence, and Shikamaru looked at Temari’s world the only way he could. Through the perspective of a death god. Always analyzing, always aware, the stench of rot sharper than any of the other murky details.

The small bar, conveniently placed next to the barely-there, blue tiled clinic, was stripped back to reveal black mold clinging to the walls of the cellar. Over exposure would cause sickness, and if not treated or removed, could result in eventual death. The gas station fire alarm didn’t work. A flame wouldn’t be noticed until too late. Smoke inhalation killed far more often than the actual flames.

Cigarettes dripping out pedestrians mouths, sunburnt cheeks, a rattlesnake hidden in the supply closet of the sheriff's station. It all was dangerous, it all could kill. Shikamaru viewed life through this lense. All the potential threats, the things that could take said life, were outlined and brighter, the world muting in contrast to them.

The car came to a sudden stop, but the rest of the world hadn’t come back to focus yet. Shikamaru glanced at Temari.

She was lit up most brightly of all. Admittedly, he was... curious, was it? But he had a job.

Slowly, color leeched back. By the time Temari had stepped onto the dusty nothing of a sidewalk, the world was as blinding as ever, the desert a marvel of heat and choking sand. Shikamaru swore that, in the distance, there was a tumbleweed.

Unable to open the car door, Shikamaru willed himself to Temari’s side. She flinched only slightly, despite having been smooth and steady the last time he’d willed himself, her nose twitching involuntarily.

“Is this really necessary? Do you have to follow me around?” she sniffed, eyes narrowed.

“No. But it is easiest to kill you this way.”

“Great. Just what every girl wants to hear.”

The building they stood before was old and worn, as all the other buildings were. The only difference was that it was the last old and worn building on main street, marking the end of an astronomically small town. Temari dug into the pockets of her overalls, searching for something or the other. Through the window, Shikamaru made out the silhouettes of fans, plants, and other scattered objects.

“Where are we anyway?” Shikamaru asked. He’d realized he didn’t know what country he was in, let alone the name of the town. He figured the former didn’t matter so much as the latter, and he wondered (oddly enough) what someone would call such a morbidly empty place.

For a moment, Temari stood very still. She paused in her search.

“So you know my name but not where you are?”

“I’m a god of death, not of knowledge. I don’t usually stay in one place long enough to find out.”

“Hm. Figures you’d be less than what everyone expects.”

Shikamaru tilted his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Nevermind.” Temari returned to digging through her pockets, and proceeded to pull out a ring of keys.

She unlocked the shop and the pair stepped into a dimly lit parlor, the sun not yet reaching through the display window, too early. There was the distinct feeling of dust blanketing the towers of silhouetted antiques around them. But when Shikamaru took a closer look, he found every surface clean. It was odd--the displayed fans pristine, glass flowers preserved like crystal.

“Electric’s out,” Temari huffed, interrupting his study. She was standing by the wall, flicking a switch repeatedly. Behind her, sitting in twine frames, were hand drawn landscapes depicting various greenery--something Shikamaru had yet to see in this godsforsaken desert, unless you counted the faux flowers.

She moved through the room like it was an old friend. He gathered she worked here--an employee, or something, sweeping through the space. She shrugged her bag off as she rounded the desk in the back. Shikamaru followed silently, through the back door and into another room. Temari clicked on a flashlight and a beam revealed a cramped closet space, a circuit breaker perched on the far wall like a portrait of tangled nerves and veins. Surely, that couldn’t be safe.

“Don’t even try it,” Temari grumbled, approaching the box. With quick hands she untangled stray wires, expertly, effortlessly, and glared when one sparked. She shot a dark look at Shikamaru, who shrugged.

“Only doing my job,” he said.

“Bastard. I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been killing people.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“You know what I mean. You can’t expect me to die because of a half-assed assassination attempt. I’ve grown up in this shop my entire life and, I promise, you won’t be able to--”

A sizzling started, and Shikamaru watched as Temari registered the situation a second too late. The sizzling grew into a cracking, and the cracking became a high wine, like the pitch of a monster from another plane--then there was the shock. Temari had no time to move.

Shikamaru had won and so easily, too.

With an explosion large enough to send shards shooting, the fuse box blew. Smoke poured like a broken heart after the initial sound and Shikamaru waited for the smell of blood.

“You bastard,” Temari spluttered, and-- _Temari_? “You idiot! I tried to tell you you can’t kill me in this store--but no, you won’t listen for a second!”

The smoke began to lift, and through it Shikamaru saw a soot-stained girl staring up at him. Her eyes were two black pools in the dark, daring him to jump in and just try to kill her. He sighed, long and deep. How troublesome.

“You can’t mean to tell me you’ve magicked this entire house to guarantee you no harm. That’s…” Shikamaru fought for words. “That’s cheating?”

For a moment, Temari sat perfectly still. Then she snorted and let out a strangled laugh. Pushing up from the floor, body swaying ever so slightly, she shook her head. Her four buns, arranged in a haphazard halo around her head, were beginning to tumble out.

“Is there such thing as cheating in a game like this?”

Shikamaru paused.

“I suppose not,” he admitted. “But you can’t tell me you’ll sit in here throughout the next three days. In the end, you’ll lose your life anyway, magic shop or not. That’s how the Gamble works.”

“True. Which is why I won’t spend all my time hiding here like some coward. I have my end of the bargain to uphold--how am I supposed to do that inside a goddamn antique store?”

Shikamaru eyed her, one eyebrow raised. “True,” he mimicked.

Temari rolled her eyes and brushed her hands off on her shorts, shooting daggers at the destroyed fuse box. She reached her hand out, as if to touch it, and then shook her head. “Nah. Kankuro will fix it.”

With that, she scooped up the flashlight that, and picked her way over a few boxes to get back into the shop, as if Shikamaru hadn’t just tried to kill her. She began rummaging around through the piles. All the carefully stacked towers tilted precariously and though Shikamaru’s first instinct was to let them fall and crack Temari’s head open, a second, unknown urge made him want to catch the items before they tumbled. After all, they had nothing to do with this Gamble. Didn’t want them breaking for some silly game. It wasn’t like they’d kill her in this shop anyway.

So he restrained himself. And the towers didn’t fall and Temari emerged victorious.

She held up a small box, the color of candy. “Candles it is,” she said, ripping into the baby pinks and blues without a second thought. She placed them in various holders scattered throughout the store and lit them, striking a match once, twice, three times.

It didn’t do much to light the room, but it was better than nothing. The sun would eventually travel to the other side of the horizon and the shop would be bright as ever.

“I hope you’re not thinking of sitting around here,” she said, huffing from behind the counter. She’d perched herself on a stool and a magazine dangled from her hands. “You know, watching over me like some plague. You’ll get bored, promise. We get only a few customers and it’s not like they’ll see you.” She tilted her head and smirked.

She wasn’t wrong. Shikamaru felt a slight pull in his gut anyway, an urge to go find different ways to cleverly end his target’s life before she restored something elses. After all, it wasn’t like he was going to kill Temari here. But he found he had a question, different from the ones he’d asked before. This time... it was personal. Shikamaru had never considered himself a personal death god.

“I have a question,” he prefaced.

“Hm. Is that so?”

Shikamaru grunted. “Yes.”

“I might have an answer. But you’ll have to give me something in return. Isn’t that how you death gods work?”

“Witch. Fine. What do you want?”

“Question for a question. Fair?

“Fair. Now, how...” Shikamaru paused. Was he curious or was it another of his dormant desires? The instinct to know more in order to kill more? “Why are you protected in this building but not your own home?”

Temari set down the magazine, propping her chin up on one hand. Dust swirled between them in the candle light, slow, lazy circles, like smoke in the wind.

“What makes you think my house isn’t warded in the same way?”

Shikamaru snorted. “Please. I would have been sent to kill you elsewhere if your house was warded. We gods can get through wards if necessary, but it’s not without effort. Some of us don’t particularly like the effort.” He sighed again. He wasn’t fond of explaining obvious things. Nor was he going to admit that he actually _had_ been sent to kill her elsewhere. “Just answer me.”

Temari glared. “You always think you’re so clever. Well, out of self interest, I’ll have you know that my parents’ placed the wards on this building. This was my mother’s family business. We have no such wards at our house, now, because I’m not powerful enough on my own to place them.”

That made… no sense. Why would her parents not place a ward on their own house?

“And before you ask--my parents are long dead. The house we used to live in was demolished. Wards keep the tenants safe but not the house itself. So now my siblings and I live in an un-warded house with me as the sole guardian. Don’t think too much on it.”

The dust seemed to slow to a stop. A thread hung between them and it was suddenly pulled taunt; what he assumed were the ghosts of emotions tumbled through the line. He yearned to go look at this world, this town, this place, and was he… was he sorry for Temari? Shikamaru took a step back, as if to break the thread, to run from this sudden wave, this connection.

“Now, I have a question,” Temari said. “Come here.”

It was the last thing Shikamaru wanted to do. But out of a sense of duty, of cosmic obligation, he moved forward and came to stand across from her, on the other side of the register. It was silent. So silent it… hurt.

“Yes?” he said and Temari leaned in.

She kept leaning. Closer. And closer. Until there wasn’t silence; there was a buzz in the air and an audible heat of some sort. It’d been cool before, no damnable sun. But now it felt like someone had cranked the thermostat. As if there was a leftover fire from the fuse box, making its way into the room.

_Does she intend to kiss me?_

The thought was fleeting, sudden, forbidden. Shikamaru felt the primal urge to back away and obey the Laws of Old--they were so clear, so specific. Humans and gods were not meant to--

“Tell me, Shikamaru, what’s your favorite animal? Clearly not dogs.”

His thoughts ran dead into the ground. What?

“My favorite _animal_?”

Temari smiled wickedly and Shikamaru could feel her breath. “Yes.”

The heat broke with a frenzy, the cool air returning and the buzzing fading. Now, it was only him and Temari, the shop and the dust. The spell had dissipated once she’d voiced her question and so Shikamaru took an abrupt step back.

“How am I supposed to know?” he snapped. “I’m a death god, not a boy, and I’ve never thought--”

“Oh, shut up. I didn’t ask for an explanation. I asked for an animal, dumbass.”

Shikamaru frowned.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Hm. Boring,” she muttered. She picked up the magazine and was suddenly very interested in whatever was between the pages. Shikamaru shook his head. That was ridiculous. She was stupid. This was…

He willed himself away, out the shop, out of the town. And in the middle of the desert, he stood as stiff as a board. Around him, the sand shifted lazily, the shrubbery twitching. He moved not a limb. The sun felt so much worse, suddenly, too hot and too bright.

Just like Temari. She had an outline just like the ways a person could die--like the mold, the fire alarm, the rattlesnake. Only, she was even brighter than the outline around those.

He shook his head once again.

Something was going on here, and whatever it was, he did not like it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again, updating at odd hours of the night. Ft. two of my other fav naruto characters!

 

It took an hour to get back to town. Though he could have willed himself wherever he wished, Shikamaru had opted to walk, hoping to shake off whatever he was...feeling? Was that it? He hoped not. He couldn’t remember ever having felt. He knew it was something he witnessed regularly, dealing in death and such, but it was certainly not something he’d ever experienced.

“Uhg,” he huffed, to no one and nothing. “How troublesome.”

Shikamaru had found composure by the time he returned, the gears in his mind slowing. He was level, ready. Ready enough to reassess what could kill in this town alongside other, more trivial things he’d yet to notice. Such as the sign.

It was an embossed scrap of a thing, easy to miss, so Shikamaru didn’t blame himself for having done so earlier. Grated by sand and time, it leaned against a lone cactus.

_Suna. Population: 451._

Suna… suna meant sand, didn’t it? Shikamaru rolled his eyes. How original.

Other things became apparent as he walked. Buildings he’d skimmed, people he’d overlooked. There was at least one murderous presence in this town and he wondered how easy it would be to manipulate them into stabbing Temari. Or perhaps he could poison her. The restaurant had a kitchen that definitely wasn’t up to standard.

Shikamaru let out a sigh deep enough to choke on, aware neither plan would work. Temari--he could already tell--would be too smart to fall for bad food. And altering someone's mind was a long and arduous process he’d rather go without. So for the next hour he sought more answers, more ideas, wandering and learning and clawing at the little information he could find. As it turned out, Suna had plenty of deadly parts and pieces that could ensure a kill. The problem was that they were mostly too obvious and all equally as laborious.

After some time, Shikamaru gave up. He fit himself into a narrow alley between the grocery and restaurant, watching the few pass without interest. None of them were bright, none of them his target.

Why was Temari so bright, in his world of muted color and sound? Why had she feigned a kiss? If she knew so much about the Laws of Old, then why would she pretend? He winced inwardly. That particular Law, the one that restricted infatuation between humans and gods, was so set in stone not even he dare cross it. He already bent the rules as it was--he didn't kill children, he was exceptionally lazy when doling out deaths… but never had he kissed a human.

_Then why did I… want..._

“You really should quit.”

Shikamaru hadn’t realized he’d been thinking of things other than death until the lilt of a girl’s voice pulled him out of thought. It was a clear sound, like a spring night, coming from behind. He turned and peered deeper into the alley, finding a pair of girls sitting against a wall, legs sprawled before them.

“Yeah, yeah, you tell me that and I hear it and nothing changes. I love you, babe, but you get it, right?”

One had bright pink hair and the other ice blonde, with a tank top cut obscenely low. The latter was the one who’d answered, the former the adviser. Shikamaru watched as Blondie took a drag of a cigarette. “Right?” she repeated. Her voice cracked.

“Right,” the other finally replied, looking down. “But, Ino, could you maybe… try? I know it’s hard. But I’m literally trying to get us out of here by becoming a doctor, and as a future doctor, I recommend that you quit.”

Ino was silent for a minute, before burying her head into her companion’s shoulder.

“For you, I guess I could try.”

She stabbed the cigarette into the dirt beside them, finite as a knife, and leaned upward, lips catching. The two began kissing. Slowly, at first. And then hands tangled into hair and straps wandered from shoulders and just when Shikamaru figured he should turn away, they broke apart. Ino held her girlfriend’s face in her hands.

“Okay, we can’t do it in an alley, Sakura. We have to go see Temari as promised.”

Sakura smirked. “She’s going to tell us to get the hell out of her shop and go back to school, you know. Unlike someone I know, she hasn’t needed any coddling for quite a while now.”

“Shut it, forehead. This isn’t some sappy check up. Kankuro asked us. We gotta make sure she actually stitched herself up alright.”

“Ino-pig,” Sakura giggled, and kissed her girlfriend once again.

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. The girls were going to visit Temari because of that cut he’d given her. At her brother’s request. Interesting.

With his curiosity piqued, Shikamaru trailed the two throughout Suna. They went into the grocery before the antique shop, grabbing bags of candies and antiseptics, giggling all the while. Sakura suggested a competition as they walked and the two made their way through the town trying to catch raisinettes in open mouths. They bypassed the police station and if anyone saw them, no one protested their skipping school.

A creak of a door and Shikamaru slipped in behind them, back into Temari’s shop. A large man with a thicket of white hair was leaning on the counter, laughing at a grinning Temari.

“...are faring _quite_ well in the city, if you catch my drift. You should come visit sometime. You know Naruto is fond of you and that youngest brother of yours.”

Temari leaned into the counter and gave a conspiratorial wink.

“Yeah, but Sasuke might murder us if we think about giving a hug. We’ll consider, though.”

The man’s laugh thundered and he turned, eyes alight at the sight of Sakura and Ino.

“And _you two_. You two absolutely need to come visit, before Naruto and Sasuke get into anymore trouble. Not to mention Chouji--after he moved out there, all he can talk about was how you never come to visit, Ino.”

Ino had a hand around Sakura’s waist and Shikamaru watched her grip tighten ever so slightly. But she only rolled her eyes. “Oh lord. I’m sure you’re exaggerating. I’m sure that fa--fantastic friend of mine is living it up at food central. Don’t lie. He’s not talking about anything else besides ribs and pork gyoza.”

“Okay, okay,” the older man said, humor coloring his every word, “I’ll admit, you’re maybe second to the food talk.”

Sakura laughed good naturedly and Ino sighed.

“Well, gotta get going, girls. I’m only here for a little and time’s wasting.” He smoothed out the faux leather jacket he wore, his smile wavering. “And for real. You all have reason to visit the city. I expect to see everyone there at some point.”

A quiet fell over the shop. From his vantage point, Shikamaru watched as Temari’s smile faltered as well. Hm.

“Alright Jiraiya, you’ve made your point. Now get out of my shop before I kick you out,” Temari said. It was light, and her tone let the frigid atmosphere warm.

Jiraiya’s laugh returned and he tilted his head in goodbye, exiting the shop.

“Oh my god,” Ino gushed, the moment the older man was out of sight. “I can’t believe Naruto’s granddad is back. What even for? Here to spirit another member of this godforsaken town away?”

Temari snorted. She didn’t blink in Shikamaru’s direction.

“A better question is why aren’t you two in school? Senioritis isn’t a free pass to come loiter in my shop.”

Sakura nudged Ino with her shoulder. “Told you,” she whispered, and then, louder: “Loiter? Really? Come on, you know your brother better than that.”

Temari looked up with a sharpness that rivaled most blades. “You walked all the way here to tell me Gaara got into another fight?”

“No! No, no!” Ino said, all but jumping in front of Sakura. “Hell no. We mean Kankuro tattled to us that you slipped last night. He said, and I quote: ‘Temari got a little fucked and tried to stitch herself up. She’s shit at that stuff.’”

Some of the sharpness faded from Temari’s gaze, but there was still a clear cut annoyance as she breathed out in relief. “He would say that,” she grumbled.

Sakura held up the med kit. With an apologetic smile she rounded the corner of Temari’s desk and held up a finger gun. “Put em’ up, cowboy.”

The next few minutes were a series of curses and blood. Shikamaru watched Sakura restitch the entire job Temari had done, cutting and disinfecting and sewing and pulling. “You’d think you’d know how to do the basic stuff living out here in the middle of nowhere, but nooo,” she said under her breath. Temari chose to ignore the comment and Shikamaru, hoping he could’ve given her a blood infection, was disappointed to see how well cared for the cut had become.

That was the thing about death. It had to be plausible, to some degree. Though it made the job inconvenient, it also kept it in check, with freak accidents created as a last resort. Shikamaru fought every time to find a balance--the easiest way to plausibly kill someone.

“All right, all right. I think that’s enough help for one day.”

Temari nudged Sakura away, collecting cotton damp with the smell of alcohol and iron, throwing it in a waste basket beneath her desk. “Not to mention, you both should get back to school.”

“Eh, we have lunch in five minutes anyway,” Ino replied. She waved her hand dismissively, then looked at her girlfriend, who was brushing cotton candy hair out of her eyes. They locked gazes and nodded imperceptibly, an exchange steeped in the the plans of two conspirators.

“And besides… you can’t possibly kick us out of your shop yet,” Ino continued, her smile a cheshire. “Kankuro happened to tell us another interesting bit about our favorite wind witch.”

The girls simultaneously stepped closer to Temari, placing elbows on the desk and chins on palms.

“Quoteth Kankuro for the second time this evening: ‘Yeah, she got home late last night, so I figured that’s why she was walking so shitty.’”

A frown passed over Temari’s face.

“And?”

“And… who’s the lucky guy?”

Temari groaned, rolling her head back in exasperation. “Of course you’d take it like that.”

Ino and Sakura giggled, bumping each other back and forth.

“How else are we supposed to take it? Late nights equate to whirlwind one night stands in this town. Don’t bother to deny it. You totally met someone!”

Shikamaru watched, one eyebrow raised. He’d known Temari was tired and slightly drunk. Hence why he originally sought to cause a car crash. But, lucky for him, he’d known the concoction that was tired and drunk could also easily lead to a slip on freshly mopped floors. Then, a skull cracking on a table corner, an end to her life. It was all he’d needed to know to make it a convincing death. However, he wasn’t aware of what lead up to the drunken tiredness, since it wasn’t exactly relevant to inventing a kill. Now, he wondered…

“I didn’t… I wasn’t really--” Temari struggled for words, trying to explain away her friends’ suspicions.

“Just tell usss,” Ino drawled. She clamped one long, manicured hand onto Temari’s arm. “We’ll find out in the end. There’s only so many people in Suna.”

“Yeah!” Sakura urged, “Was it Kiri from woodshop? Or maybe Hanjiko?”

There was a moment of bated breath and clenched teeth. Temari clearly didn’t want to talk about whatever--or whoever--she’d been doing last night. So Shikamaru was somewhat surprised (or at least as close to it as he could get) when she let out that bated breath and flicked her eyes to him. As if he were the answer to it all. Which, in some aspect, he supposed he was.

“Fine. I did meet someone last night. But it was _not_ anyone from town.”

“Omigod!” Ino squeaked. “A _drifter_?”

“A trucker?”

“Ew, Sakura. Truckers are the worst.”

“Well, I mean--”

Temari shook herself out of Ino’s grasp and scowled, crossing her arms and leaning back into her stool.  “For your information, no, it wasn’t a trucker. And, yes, it was a drifter of sorts. He was just supposed to be passing through.”

The girls bit back squeals, little things caught in their throats as they tried not to annoy Temari into kicking them out. It was a marvel she hadn’t yet, considering her concerns about school. He had a hard time imagining that she’d usually indulge her friends like this, with all the responsibility she seemed so keen on shouldering.

“He was cute. Eh, hot, if you looked at him from a certain angle,” she said.

“Give us _details_ , you prude!”

Temari shot them a withering look. “What more do you want to know? He got me drunk and we talked. Not much happened. He wanted to take me away from here, y’know?”

“Uhg, out of towners. What boneheads.” Sakura scoffed. “As if they’re the magic key to getting out of Suna. Bite me.”

“Yeah, I know. He couldn’t have convinced me, obviously. But I’ll give him points for trying. He was all legs and dark hair and pretty eyes and, strangely enough, smart. He knew I was a witch at first glance.”

Shikamaru was beginning to suspect something here.

“And he was all into deals and games, which, admittedly, wasn’t the biggest turn on. But he made it work. So by the end of the night I’d made half a dozen bets with him and got stuck with having to see the guy again.”

Okay, maybe suspect was the wrong word. Shikamaru knew for certain she was talking about him.

Ino draped herself over Sakura's shoulders and let out a breath more dramatic than the first. “We get it, he was all bad and no good just how you like em’. But did you guys fuck? That’s the real question.”

Temari smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Temariii,” they drawled. Ino threw her hand into the air. “Just tell us!”

For a moment it seemed like Temari wasn’t going to. Shikamaru was sure she’d kick them out of her shop and leave them hanging. Of course, he already knew the answer. If it was him she was talking about--and he was positive it was--they obviously hadn’t.

But then Temari’s eyes were flashing to him again. And there was a moment that hung between them, like that thread he’d felt before, retwining and twisting itself from across the room. It was uncomfortable, still new in a sense. He hadn't felt because he was a death god. He figured he couldn’t. But ever since he’d been sent on this job, it seemed he’d been figuring wrong.

“No, we didn’t.” Temari said, snapping him back to the present. She waited another long moment, eyes locked onto his. “Not yet, anyway.”

A heat that matched the newly taxing sun made its way through Shikamaru’s illusion of a body. A body he didn’t think could feel such heat, such wonder. He immediately broke their gaze and backed away, further and further, until he’d willed himself out of the shop all together.

“Fuck,” he breathed, and for a long while, didn’t say anything else.

\---

Eventually, Sakura and Ino left. But Shikamaru didn’t go back in. Not when they were hours gone, not when another customer went in, and not when that customer went out again. It wasn’t until Temari herself exited the shop, closing up lock and key, that he bothered approaching.

“You’re horribly boring,” he said, sniffing slightly. “And a liar.”

Temari looked at him incredulously, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “And you’re a pretentious asshole who’s never known what fun is, probably.”

“Why would you say what you said to your friends?” he asked.

“A question for a question, again?”

“Just tell me.”

“Fine. I was trying to mess with you. Like I said, you’re no fun, always trying to kill me, so I thought I might throw you off your game.”

“You can’t do that. Death gods can’t feel, and thus can’t be thrown off. Nice try, witch.”

“Again. No fun.”

Temari hopped into the convertible, not waiting for Shikamaru to will himself next to her before taking off, a three point turn back down main street. In no time at all, they were in front of the one room schoolhouse, parked alongside two other vehicles. One was a rickety old truck, the other a dingy outie. Both were falling apart at the seams.

Shikamaru tilted his head upward, watching the clouds drift, each but a wisp in the expanse of blue above. He was curious as to why anyone would live out here. It seemed a waste of time. It seemed a long, lonely existence in a place with plenty of danger, though not enough to warrant a thrill, a razor thin line to dance upon. If there was one thing he’d learned about mortals in his line of work, it was that the prospect of death could thrill in the right context. It was only when death came to collect that it was unwanted.

Fickle humans. What a wonder it must be to feel on a whim; to want and then unwant within the span of one lifetime.

Shikamaru sighed at the thought. Then a bell was ringing, a dull clang of metal against metal, and the doors to the school opened in a rush. A handful of kids, ranging in ages young to old, ran down the steps, the older they were, the slower they ran. Shikamaru spotted Sakura and Ino trailing out last. They were locked in a bubble of their own creation, whispering up a cloud around them.

“Let’s go, lets go. Monsoon season waits for no one,” Kankuro shouted, jumping into the back of the car. Shikamaru hadn’t seen him approach, but was unsurprised by the curt greeting, and even less so when a certain red-headed, sour-faced boy followed. Gaara was looking especially vexed this afternoon.

“I should leave you to walk all the way home,” Temari grumbled, starting the car once again. “I can’t believe you told Sakura and Ino on me. You know they’re relentless.”

“I know. But you deserved it for ditching us last night.”

“What I do when I ditch you is none of your business.”

“And yet, everything we do is a part of yours. Funny how the tables turn like that.”

Temari snorted. “I’m your guardian. The tables turn accordingly.” She was clearly done with Kankuro's little battle of wits. He smirked, visible in the rear view mirror, his purple eyeliner smudged as he replied anyway.

“Just trying to watch out for you, sis.”

A grumble came from the back. In a turn of events, it seemed Gaara was the one who had said something. Everyone in the car heard it but no one had made out the words. Shikamaru turned around in his seat.

“What was that, Gaara?” Temari asked, voice suddenly strained. She sounded like she was desperate for her youngest brother to say something, anything to her.

“I said,” Gaara began, raising his voice. It was rough as the sand around them, irate in a way Shikamaru seldom heard. “I said next time you want to go mourn your dead boyfriend, don’t go the day before it’s supposed to rain. And don’t wake me up doing it.”

Two things happened at once.

Temari stepped on the gas, her face turning a pale imitation of what it once was.

And something occurred to Shikamaru, as he turned his gaze back up toward the clouds.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this chapter is a little longer than the ones I've previously posted! Hope you all like! (Oh, and if you're looking for those good spicy scenes, I promise they're coming. Maybe I should've tagged this as a slow burn? Hmmm... lmk what you think!)

“I have to go back to the shop now. I’ll be home with dinner in a few hours. There’s pizza rolls in the freezer if you get hungry.”

Temari was gripping the steering wheel two times too tight. Her shoulders were tense, her knuckles white against the dark of her skin, and Shikamaru knew a line had been crossed back at the school. He figured shouting questions while racing down the highway was not the smartest of decisions, so he hadn’t inquired.

Gaara said nothing as he clamored out the car and up the porch steps. He slammed the screen door behind him and a thump came from inside, backpack on wood. Temari winced. Kankuro, on the other hand, paused after he stepped out of the car.

“Sorry,” he muttered. He gave his sister the briefest kiss on the cheek and then ran inside.

Neither Shikamaru or Temari said a word until they were back in the shop.

“I’m not going to talk about it, if that’s what you think is going to happen,” Temari spit. Her eyebrows were drawn and she clutched her magazine like a lifeline in an infinite sea.

“Hm,” Shikamaru replied, noncommittally.

“I’m serious. I’m not talking.”

“Sure sounds like it.”

“Smartass.”

“Witch.”

“You haven’t tried to kill me in a while. This deal has turned into sort of a drag.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth. I haven’t seen you bring a single thing to life. That is quite the drag.”

She smiled thinly from behind the paper. “Ah, death is all about in the moment. Life, on the other hand, requires planning. You have no idea what kind of preparations I’ve been making.”

“Bold of you to assume that death is in the moment. I’ve been planning, Temari. I have to, because I never make the same kill twice.”

The door to the shop creaked; a shadow cast in the silhouette of the setting sun. After the day had reached its peak, it’d begun throwing light through the front windows, rendering the candles useless. Yet they burnt still, watchful in the dusk.

Temari fell silent as the figure approached and when it was close enough, it revealed itself to be a boy, barely taller than the counter itself.

“Konohamaru,” Temari drawled, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. “What brings you into my shop today?”

Konohamaru puffed up his chest, as if to make himself taller than he was. His skin was dark with sun, cheeks scorched and black eyes wide as the world. “I need a charm, old lady!”

Temari shook her head and Shikamaru raised a brow. “What kind of charm?”

“Moegi is sick. We need sumthin’ that’ll keep the air around her clean so her meds have a chance to work.”

“That’s no small charm. It’ll cost you, Konohamaru.”

“Yeah, but you’ll cut us a deal.”

“Will I?”

“Duh.”

Shikamaru sniffed, interjecting himself into the conversation. Not that Konohamaru could hear. “I thought this was an antique shop,” he said.

Temari didn’t answer him directly.

“Fine. Fifty coins. Take it or leave it. Oh, and you have to take one of these pieces of junk off my hands.”

The boy squinted at Temari, half hidden in the shadow of the back of the shop. “That doesn’t seem very fair.”

“What can I say? My reputation precedes me. I cut deals to those coming in for antiques. My backroom dealings are a little different.”

Konohamaru glared. “Fine,” he said, digging into his pockets. “Whatever you say, old lady.” There was the clacking of coins, a long, terse time in which Konohamaru counted out his money. “I have forty-three,” he grumbled, finally, setting his earnings down with a clang. Temari stared at them, impassive. “It’s all I’ve got, okay?”

“Not enough. Come back tomorrow if you want the charm.”

“But, Temari--! You can’t be that--”

“Cruel? Save it. You know how my business works. Come back tomorrow.”

Konohamaru set his jaw, surprise and hurt clouding. Shikamaru wasn’t sure what to think. On one hand, Temari’s response seemed to be in line with her relentlessness. But on the other…something was off. Something wasn’t quite right.

“Fine!” Konohamaru shouted, snatching back up his coins. “I’ll become a Warlock way better than you one day anyway, then I’ll never have to come asking for your help again!”

He stormed out of the store, the door rattling behind him.

“Harsh,” Shikamaru commented, and Temari rolled her eyes.

“Inevitable. If you can’t pay, you can’t play. And who are you to talk? You kill people for a living.”

“Ha ha. Very funny. I see what you did there.”

She flashed him a smile of stars. “Glad to see you’re keeping up.”

\---

After another hour, Temari departed to the back room, the door shutting firmly in her wake. Technically, Shikamaru could have willed himself into the space with her, but he decided to keep his distance. He’d been around Temari so much already and there were still two days left.

He eyed the shop, antiques glowing in the fade of day. New things jumped out among the rabble, a boat in a bottle here, an ancient globe there and the assortment of oddities only held his interest for so long. He wandered to Temari’s desk. The cash register was an ancient, old brick and the drawers were half open, cluttered with what seemed to be pens and bones and stickers with seals on them. The drawers of a witch, certainly. He turned to the magazine, left half open on the counter.

Shikamaru wasn’t allowed to interact with most objects in the material world. When he tried to pick them up, often his hand went right through. It was a cold sensation that he avoided whenever possible. Instead, his will was all he needed to move things, though it only worked in the context of bringing about someone's death. He could twist an ankle, move a chair a half inch, lure an animal out of its den. The important stuff.

The exception was when a target was holding something--a target, on the edge between the two worlds, the living and the godly, brought whatever they held in and out. Sometimes it made it possible for Shikamaru to hold the object, too. The target would have had to been handling it relatively recently, within minutes of Shikamaru handling, but perhaps it would work on the magazine now.

He tried once, fingers passing through the page. Pricks of ice ran through his hand. Grimacing, he tried once again, and this time he caught a fingertip on an edge, flipping the paper over just enough for him to see inside. At first glance, it seemed to be a normal magazine. There were advertisements for lingerie and perfumes, a man bent at the knee worshiping the woman above him. But within the pages, note cards stuck out, each laden with diagrams and notes, pictures and points.

There was a hand, on one. A symbol on the other, a call for… blood?

 _Slam_.

Temari’s arm came out of nowhere, knocking the magazine away, paper wilting into the floor. There was a strangled breath and Shikamaru made a strangled noise of his own as he careened backwards, trying to avoid the inexplicable heat and light that emanated from her. Temari seemed to be on fire, her outline a blinding beacon, her heat the sun. Shikamaru fought to catch his non-existent breath.

“Stay out of my shit,” she hissed, raking him over with her eyes. They tore into him in a way he couldn’t comprehend, barbed-wire wounds, and with an open mouth he scrambled backwards.

“You’re horrible,” he spit.

“I am what I am. Now get out.”

Shikamaru, bright as he was, heeded her advice.

\---

Temari was locking up again when Shikamaru made her step on a rusty nail.

Temari gasped in horror, the pain apparent in her hand over her mouth, her watering eyes. It hadn’t come lean through--it was too small for that. But it was ridden with rust and dirt and enough unpleasantness to warrant a call to the doctor.

“You bastard,” she shrieked. “I--you’re--you’re like a child!”

Shikamaru shrugged. He was just doing his job, after all. “Tetanus can kill, you know.”

Temari glared, tears glistening. She sat down right there, in the middle of the sidewalk, and yanked the nail out through her sandal. She gasped. Blood spilled, black in the night. It was a marvel that no one else was around to see it.

“You really think you can kill me just by opening me up?” she snapped. “I don’t care how many times you stab and slice. I’m not stupid enough to die of infection.”

“But you are stupid enough to step on a nail in the first place.”

“That--that’s not--what does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Fuck off.”

Temari hobbled to the car, bracing herself against the door. She drove to the small clinic, somehow, and practically slammed the doors open. Shikamaru watched with as much disinterest as he could muster as she dragged herself to the front counter. A woman sat behind it, formidable and glued to a crossword. Her hair was pulled back in two low pigtails, a style far too young for her age, though there was a way she carried herself that said she’d punch you for saying so. She looked up sharply when Temari came in.

“Temari, what--”

“Nail. In foot. Please help.”

“Ah.”

The woman came out from behind her desk, propping Temari up with one arm. Together, they limped to the back of the small room, decorated in soft blues and flower petals. They pushed through doors into a more sterile section of the building, one with no nice waiting chairs and scuffed tile. In the back, there was chrome and the scent of burning cleanliness, scalding to most, uncomfortable to Shikamaru.

“You idiot. How did you step on a nail?” the older woman asked, setting Temari up on the counter.

“How does anyone step on anything? It was an accident. Please bandage me up and give me that shot or whatever.”

“The tetanus booster? You’re lucky we even have that in stock. We would’ve had to drive you all the way out to the city if not.”

“Okay, doc. I have stuff I have to do.”

"Doc" glared.

It took about an hour to fix Temari up. Much as Sakura had, the doctor here disinfected and bandaged the wound, grumbling all the while. She was likely the person who taught Sakura, if Shikamaru were to guess, as they both had a similar disposition. Chastising, muttering. It was more or less the same.

The session ended with a shot, which Temari bore with a straight face. The needle was perfectly clean, the wound impeccably bandaged. There was no chance of her dying from infection, just as Temari’d said.

“Alright. I want to see you back in this clinic, bright and early. We can’t have our town witch dying on us.”

Temari gave her a half-hearted smile. “You can say that again. Thanks, Tsunade.”

The woman--Tsunade, apparently--nodded her head. “Now get on out of here. We’ll bill the house. Unless you want to come work for us in the clinic, of course.” She raised her eyebrows, as if having asked a million times before.

“Not going to happen. I have too much to do as is.”

“Figures. Be safe out there, then. It’s supposed to rain tonight.”

“I’ll be fine. Oh--also, could you give this to Konohamaru?”

Shikamaru had somehow known, long before she’d told Tsunade, that Temari had made the charm despite Konohamaru’s lack of money. It was a small rope, laced with beads and bits of glass, decidedly plain despite the adornments. She handed it to Tsunade, the movement forced. It had been quite a long day, if Shikamaru and their deal was any indication. She must’ve felt drained.

“For Moegi,” she muttered.

“They call you cruel, you know. And you can be, my wind witch. But you’re also so soft I could mistake you for bread.”

“Oh, shut it, hag.”

Tsunade gripped the rope in her hand for a moment. She seemed reluctant.

“And--and I know you hate the question--but how are you doing, love?” Tsunade asked, a tenderness showing that Shikamaru had yet to see. The question was quiet, personal.

Temari dropped her gaze. She stared at the floor for some time, as if she could find an answer to the question buried there. And when she glanced up, toward Shikamaru, her eyes were wet under the fluorescent lights of the clinic. Some of that irritation was still there, leftover from her encounter with the nail, but now there was something deeper. A shadow of disappointment. Shikamaru couldn’t fathom why such an emotion brimmed there--a gamble was a gamble and Temari made it knowing the stakes. It was completely her fault, the attempt was inevitable, and she couldn’t be disappointed in him for doing his job.

_Why do I not…?_

He felt like he was the only person in the world when she finally answered.

“I miss him,” she said, soft. “I miss him and I wish he didn’t haunt me in this way.”

And there was something worse in those words, worse than her burning anger and cursing and hate for Shikamaru. Rather, it was a sadness, a horror, a regret, a well filled with all the things she meant, indecipherable in their overflowing jumble. Shikamaru wished, for a half turn of the cosmos, that he could make out at least a measure of it.

Tsunade stood up, brushing her hands off on her jacket.

“Well, I won’t say I’m sorry,” she said, and left both Shikamaru and Temari at the bottom of that well.

\---

“Fuck! Fucking fuck! Are you kidding me? I’m out of gas?” Temari slammed her hands on the steering wheel, appalled that the vehicle would dare stop.

Shikamaru tilted his head toward her.

“That’s what happens when you don’t put gas in it.”

“Shut up. I’m still not talking to you.”

“Of course.”

Temari swung the door open, stepping onto the dirt road. Around her, the canyon rose pitch black in the dark, the stars hardly illuminated behind the haze of clouds. They’d stopped here, at this point, in the deep dip that marked the midway point between one side of the canyon and the next. Behind them, the town, hidden by the downward swell of the hill. Over the other side, Temari’s house, with two brothers waiting.

“This is so stupid. I’m going to have to radio in to get someone to drive out here, at goddamn nine at night, well after I’m supposed to be home with dinner--uhg!” Temari kicked a tire with her good foot, limping around in frustration before returning to her seat.

“I hate you,” she said, though Shikamaru couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or the car. Probably not the car.

Temari rummaged around in the glove box, leaning over Shikamaru, her toned shoulders and messy hair all he could see. She felt her graze against his legs, her chest just touching-- “Found it!”

She pulled back abruptly, holding a walkie in her hand.

Temari flicked the switch on. Nothing happened. She flicked it again, waiting for some light, some sound, and then flicked it again. And again.

“Fuck!” she shouted--again. “Fucking--it’s out of battery!”

Shikamaru tried to hide the faint smile that was forming. It was becoming comical, her tribulation. But, evidently, he did not hide it well enough, as Temari shoved him out of nowhere, rocking. Her skin was warm against the cold of his. He jerked back harder than her push warranted.

“And don’t you go smiling about this, either, you piece of--”

From above, a crack of thunder cut into Temari’s words. And then, drops of rain.

Temari began to laugh. It was a hysterical kind of laughter; the kind that held no humor, only disbelief and frustration. She threw her hands up into the air and leaned her head back. The rain trailed down her face, looking more like tears.

“You’re something else, aren’t you?” she said, her laughter gone as sudden as it came. She let out a deadly sigh and, soon, she was drenched, her tank top beneath the overalls sticking like a second skin. She didn’t seem to care that the upholstery was getting soaked. She looked at Shikamaru out the corner of her eye. “Truly. You’re in a league of your own.”

Shikamaru didn’t stay to figure out what that meant. Within one blink and the next, he’d willed himself to a perch within the canyon, a spot in which he could watch from above. From this angle, it was all a game of dolls and cars. Which he knew it should be. He ignored the sinking in his stomach that seemed to say otherwise.

It didn’t take long for Temari to finally get out and put the hood up. As she did so, the rain began to pour harder, slamming into the ground with a viciousness that matched the sky above, the black canvas of cloud. Shikamaru willed it to rain harder, harder, for the crack of lightning to come closer and the thunder to boom louder. It was chaos and it was planned and it wasn't so hard to encourage the weather, bound to the monsoon season. Shikamaru knew that flash floods killed more often than you’d expect.

The dip in the road was beginning to fill up, and Temari was realizing it, too. He watched as she made the decision to abandon the car, knowing it would only fill with water and kill her quicker. Rather, she opted to climb the cumbersome hill, though the dirt had turned muddy and slick. It didn’t stop her from trying. And for long, indispensible minutes, she slid and slipped over and over again. There would be no haven through that route.

 _Especially not with that hurt foot of hers_ , Shikamaru thought bitterly, his plot coming to fruition. Temari had been wrong about death being in the moment. Death was as carefully planned as life, no matter the musings of a girl.

The dip was filling up rapidly, now. It was getting harder for Temari to so much as lift up her feet, the mud more like quicksand, water sucking at her legs and lashing against her arms. Though he didn’t want to acknowledge it, Shikamaru could tell she was screaming for him. Not for help, or reprieve, no, but for blood. And it would’ve been funny if the water hadn’t reached above her head at that exact point, if a death were ever.

Shikamaru waited for the string that pulled between them to snap. It must have been formed as a result of the Gamble they’d made, and he knew, as soon as she died, it would break. So he waited for the victory, for the success. Maybe it hadn’t been easy--maybe it’d been uncomfortable and messy and a sort of work he usually didn’t resort to. But he’d done it, in the end, and killed Temari before she could bring anything to life.

He didn’t feel regret. He didn’t feel regret. He _couldn’t_ feel regret and he _couldn’t_ feel relief when the string didn’t snap. He wasn’t thankful when Temari’s head burst from the water, a speck in the dark. And--no. _No, no, no._  He was not grateful and all he said was, “fuck,” and all he felt was his will strengthening, the rain pouring like it’d never poured before. No. He did not feel a single thing at all. He couldn’t.

Her head went back under. For a full minute, a minute and thirty seconds. Two. And for certain, Shikamaru thought it’d worked this time, that the catastrophe would suffice.

After all, flash floods killed more often than you’d think.

But the string wasn’t godsdamn snapping. Instead, a sharp, gut wrenching pain was suddenly running through the thread and into his chest; yanking, pulling, twisting. It held none of the discomfort it had before--it held rage, now, and fire. He almost fell from his perch, the rain slicker than it was supposed to, colder than it should. But as quickly as the pain started, it stopped. The cacophony of sensation left and Shikamaru was just Shikamaru again. Except--except he’d lost his intent of will.

A sound louder than thunder echoed through the canyon. Like a roar of a beast, the water burst upward, exploding under the flash of lightning. Each drop illuminated a stark yellow, a crisp white, and between it all, Temari.

She was coated in muck. Thick sludge trailed down her cheeks and soaked her hair, likely stuck between her teeth. Her legs shook as she stood in the whirlpool she’d created, one of wind, one of air. She was a witch, after all, but Shikamaru was still struck by the fact that it would take so much more than this to kill her. Hadn’t she been making charms all day? Her power, surely, was drained. This was impossible.

But Temari had been impossible since the moment he’d locked eyes with her. She’d invoked more laws than almost any human he’d ever known, avoided his deaths like they were mere inconveniences, and ordered him away whereas Shikamaru had never been ordered before. It was terrifying, her impossibility. And more terrifying still was her, here, now, using that impossibility, her power as a manipulator of the world and the wind, to part the water and walk up the hill as she hadn’t before. With a strength even Shikamaru didn’t think he possessed, she clamored upward and out of the pool below.

“Hell,” he muttered, mesmerized.

At the top, she didn’t stop. She walked. And walked. Through the gunfire of rain and canons of thunder, she walked for longer than he could’ve imagined, her power flaring in the night. From the death trap, to ten feet from her front porch, she walked. Shikamaru watched it all in silence, forgetting about his will over the weather until his will reached no more. The thunder dimmed and the clouds dispersed and soon Temari wasn’t using her power at all. Just sheer stubbornness, limping along the damp sand.

Three feet. Three feet to the front porch. And that was when she collapsed. Something inside Shikamaru stirred. That tether, perhaps, or something all his own. He hadn’t managed to kill her in his own way. She’d thwarted him at every step, and, now, she would die three feet from the house, fifteen from the spot where he’d first tried to kill her. It was a cosmic joke, an interplanetary irony. That thing inside Shikamaru stirred further, and before he knew it, he was next to her.

With gentle hands, he tried his best to prop her up. It took effort, but he was able to sling his arm around her and hers around him. And though Temari was coated the damp, the muck, the cold itself wrapping around her bones, she felt so warm against him. It was criminal, how warm she felt.

Step by step, they made their way towards the door, the stars watchful above. For a brief moment, Shikamaru wondered what happened when a death god saved a life. Had it ever happened before? He chose not to dwell on it. He wasn't the dwelling type.

They were at the door when Temari’s head lulled toward him, her half-lidded eyes staring into nothing. Her pupils were dilated in the dark, wide as dinner plates, and just as Shikamaru was about to knock, she grabbed onto his arm.

“Don’t go,” she whispered, throat raw with water. “Don’t leave me. I’m sorry--don’t--”

She placed her fingers on his face, on his lips, trailing. She was achingly gentle, and Shikamaru felt he was taking advantage of her in some way. After all, only minutes ago, he’d tried to kill her. He grabbed her hand, and used it to ring the doorbell.

By the time Kankuro opened the door, Shikamaru was gone, and Temari was collapsing into her brothers arms.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohmygoddd I am so sorry for the late update! I went on vacation and it completely slipped my mind! As an apology, today will be a double update <3 Neither are particularly long, but I hope you all still enjoy!
> 
> Btw, let me know how you feel about the pacing/progression of their interaction! Was the spicy stuff not spicy enough or was it too quick? Thanks for reading guys!

The next morning, Tsunade made a house call. Shikamaru sat in a spot on the windowsill beside Temari’s bed, listening to the railing of the older woman.

“What do you _mean_ your radio didn’t work? You’re foolish enough to drive around without batteries in it? Are you daft?”

“Tsunade--”

“And not to mention the fact that you didn’t have gas on you! Everyone has gas on them, everyone, because you know how fucked you can get when you don’t have extra gas!”

“Tsunade--”

“Don’t get me started on--”

“ _Tsunade!_ ”

Tsunade was breathing hard, her whole body terse with frustration. Temari, on the other hand, seemed mildly annoyed. Shikamaru watched with little amusement, nudging his foot into the wooden floor. Sunlight pressed against his back with unexpected force. It was usually mild in the early morning, but strangely enough it was prickling now, as if he were in the car next to Temari.

“What is it, child?” Tsunade finally snapped.

“I’m fine.” Temari said, a frown carved deep. “I don’t feel sick. Or hurt. Honestly. I just want to get my brothers to school and go back to work and get the car towed and we can pretend this never happened, okay?”

“And just how will you do that with no car?” Tsunade leered, looking down at her patient with eyes intent as a bloodhound.

“Truck,” Temari responded. “It’s not as nice, but we definitely have a truck. We’ll just go the long way.”

“Your foot?”

“Looks like you rebandaged it pretty well.”

“Your sanity?”

Temari glared. “Intact.”

There was a stare off, the weight of bricks, and eventually Tsunade threw her hands up. “Fine,” she said. “Fine. But you’re staying home today. I’ll take your brothers to school and you will remain here. And you won’t worry about the shop for once. Or your stupid car. Jiraiya is in town, I’ll get him to tow it.”

“But--”

“That’s the best you’re going to get. Take it or leave it.” Tsunade’s words mirrored Temari’s from yesterday, and Shikamaru wondered just how many people Tsunade had influenced in this town. It didn’t seem limited to Sakura.

“Fine!” Temari grumbled, sinking down into her pillow. “I’ll stay. But they better not be late for first period, hag.”

Clearly, it was a compromise for both of them because both exhaled in defeat. Tsunade began to leave the room, her heels clacking and hips swaying. She paused before the door. “Swear it. Bed rest. All day.”

Lying, Temari nodded.

Shikamaru could tell. He could. There was no way Temari, who’d ran over a dog, survived a fuse box, stepped on a nail and climbed out of a sinkhole, would be sitting in bed all day.

\---

Twenty minutes later, after Tsunade and the boys left for town, Temari threw off her covers. She didn’t appear to have given any thought to Shikamaru, who turned away automatically as she began tearing her nightwear off. He didn’t say anything when she threw a pair of underwear near him, red as holy hell. He didn’t even talk until, snark apparent, he said:

“I thought you swore to bed rest.”

Temari huffed. “I thought you swore you’d kill me.”

“Well, I tried to kill you. I can’t help it if it didn’t work.”

“No, no. Don’t give me that. You helped me last night, when I couldn’t make it to the door.”

“Oh. You remember that?”

“No shit.”

Irked, Shikamaru turned back to her, deliberately ignoring the fact that she was in only in a tank top and underwear. “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“Yes, we do, actually. I want to know why you did it. Is it some clause in the deal that I didn’t know about? Did you mess up my gamble by saving me?”

“I didn’t save you, witch.”

Temari stormed over to him. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, curling damp from the shower she’d taken last night. “Fine. You didn’t save me. But why did you help me?”

Shikamaru studied her face, eternally cursed to always notice things he’d failed to notice before. As it turned out, Temari had the lightest dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. There was a notch in her lip from some scar long since faded. In the light of the window, every color in her eyes came out like the sea itself. He realized she was burning again.

“I didn’t help you,” he said, steeling himself. “I was just saving time. Had you waited five more minutes, Kankuro would have found you himself. I aided the inevitable.”

The burning seemed to waver. She stepped a little closer, looking him square in the eye.

“Swear to me that’s what it was. Swear it.”

_Like you swore to Tsunade? Sure._

Lying, Shikamaru nodded his head.

“I swear it.”

\---

The kitchen was a mess. Leftover pizza roll pans littered the counter. Plates and forks and napkins were stuffed in places they shouldn’t and sauce smudged on the corners like blood. Temari groaned when they entered, shaking her head.

“Nope. Not doing this. Kankuro can when they get home,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

She went to the pantry and rifled through it, procuring a box of cereal and a misshapen orange. With the knowledge of a lifelong tennent, she placed the items on the counter behind her, unseeing, and moved to the fridge without another thought. She was the wind, now that Shikamaru thought about it. Swift, effortless.

“Do you want anything?” Temari asked, milk carton in hand. She looked over her shoulder at him, as if he wasn’t betting against her life.

“Death gods can’t--”

“Eat. Right, right. I forget. You don’t want to try? Don’t you have a stomach?”

“Uh, I don’t think so?”

“If you don’t think so, then it must be that you’ve never bothered to find out.”

Temari kicked the refrigerator closed, settling into a stool behind the counter, next to where Shikamaru had situated himself.

“Come on. Try. I know you’re able to hold things, so why not try to eat things?”

“It’s not that easy. It has to be held by my target first. And even then it’s tricky to grasp.”

Temari's eyes went alight, like a bulb flicking to on.

“So what you’re telling me… is that I have to feed you?”

“That is _not_ what I said.”

“Yeah, but it’s what I’m hearing.”

Shikamaru groaned. “How are you comfortable doing this? Do you like this kind of thing? Do you like feeding the immortal being that’s basically stalking you and who’s positively trying to kill you?”

“Hey, you’re the one following _me_ around. I’m just trying to make the most of it.”

“Even though I tried to drown you last night?”

“They can’t all be winners.”

Temari pushed the milk aside, picking up the orange and peeling it swifter than if she’d cut it. She pulled apart the pieces with similar precision and held up a slice, a smirk dancing on her lips. Slow as the drip of a drug, she bit into it, juice bursting. Temari wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and turned the slice to him.

Shikamaru frowned.

“This is humiliating.”

Temari only waited, chewing her half. It was as if she were challenging him with that look, that quirk in her brow. And Shikamaru, instinctually, rose to the bait. How could he deny her a gamble so harmless, so easy to win?

Shikamaru parted his lips and Temari brought the fruit to him. He tried to maneuver around her fingers, but the witch was deliberate, trailing one nail against his inner lip before leaning back. It was shocking enough that the orange was corporal in his mouth, a flavor that he hadn’t known he could taste, but what was more was the _heat._ As delicious as the orange, left by her skin, it was cause enough for Shikamaru’s breath to catch.

“Good, right?” Temari said, tilting her head as if nothing had happened.

Shikamaru glared, but couldn’t help nodding. The citrus was going straight to his head. It tasted so damn good--good enough to get high off of. He didn’t think he’d ever eaten before and if this is what it did, then he understood why death gods didn’t eat period.

“More?”

Shikamaru tried not to acknowledge her. But it really wasn’t his fault, considering Temari was so insistent in offering, that eventually he did acknowledge her, that he did nod, and, as if a candle, melted into act of eating. He did not, under any circumstances, let on that he was also, somehow, beginning to melt into her.

\---

“Alright, go find someone else to bother.”

It was an hour later, and Temari had her hair tied up, her legs crossed, and her shoulder too close to Shikamaru's for comfort. They were sitting side by side on the couch and, for the figurative life of him, Shikamaru could not think of a good way to kill her while they watched TV. Blow another fuse? Suffocate on air? None of it made sense, so for one, insane moment, he simply let himself watch TV.

She nudged him with the shoulder that was too close. It was hot. Hotter than ever before.

“Oh, but however will I survive if I don’t find out what happened to Gerald after Veronica left him?” Shikamaru lamented, sarcasm a vice.

Temari snickered, flicking off the screen. “I think you’ll be fine, o immortal being. I’m sure you can look into the ether and figure it out if you wanted to.”

Shikamaru smirked. “You know it doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, do I?” She turned to him fully, balancing on her knees and pressing into his side. “Tell me something,” she said. “Seriously. Have you ever Gambled before?”

She was in his space, now. In his air. He swallowed thickly before answering. “Once.”

“Who was it?”

“Curious this morning. I’ll trade you question for a question.”

The faintest smile touched her lips. Temari placed one hand on his thigh, leaning closer than before. Close as they’d been at the shop yesterday, when she’d asked him his favorite animal.

“Deal. So who was it?” she said.

“Another girl, a few years younger than you. She had glasses. My turn. Why can you stop a storm in its tracks but not place a safety ward on your own home?”

“Easy. I have an affinity for wind and air, not earth, which is where most safety charms root themselves. Spirit wards however… highly affiliated with wind.” Temari shrugged delicately. “What was her name?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t often remember names. Were both your parents magic born?”

“A shame. And, yes, they were both magically inclined. They died when I was six.”

“I didn’t ask when they died.”

“But you wanted to know. Did she win her Gamble?”

There was a distinct lightness in Shikamaru’s head. It grew as Temari moved, her hands wandering, legs shifting. “No,” he said, barely saying anything at all. “Are you the only witch in town?”

He almost jumped when Temari trailed her fingers under his shirt. They skimmed up his ribs, scraping his skin like the brush of a flame. “No. How old was she, exactly?”

“Fourteen.”

“Is that the youngest you’ve killed?”

“I haven’t asked my question.”

Her lips were on his neck. How they’d gotten there, Shikamaru didn’t know. And now he could feel her heartbeat like the flutter of a bird’s wings, steady, full of life. It traveled through the tether--even though--even if--it was impossible for him to feel such things so sharply. There was supposed to be a barrier between the world and him. Why was it that she and she alone continuously broke it down?

He groaned, her teeth ghosting behind his ear. Was this what good felt like? Was this right? It was intoxicating, like the fruit, but so much worse. “I’ve never killed a child,” he said.

“I could’ve told you that.”

Shikamaru felt a jolt rip through him at the breathy noise she made at the end of her sentence, a low half of a moan. She was on top of him now, moving to straddle. She put her knee between his legs. “My turn,” he strained. His breathing was labored, as was hers.

She wasn’t kissing him, exactly. But she was grazing her lips over his skin, trailing those damn fingernails up his side. It was painful, these little touches. It was good. It was everything and anything he’d never known he wanted and with hands shaking, he put them on her hips, thumbs rubbing circles on her bare skin. He _wanted._  But gods did not want.

“Why are you doing this?”

The witch and the death god froze.

“What?”

They were breathing, hard. Their foreheads rested on the other's and the barest shadow of a kiss lingered between them. A push and pull, like opposite ends of a magnet, almost touching, then missing at the last second.

“Why would you do this, Temari? I’m trying to kill you. My whole purpose as a god of death is to bury you six feet under. Why are you trying to undo me?”

“You mean why am I trying to kiss you?”

“You know the Laws well enough. You know, don’t hide it. Humans and gods--”

“We don’t mix. I know.”

“Then,” he pulled her off of him, gentle as he talked, his words as non-existent as he was. “Then _why?_ ”

Once beside him, the world seemed to shift back into place. Temari’s intensity dimmed, the gold outline of death less prominent than before. She was a mystery, a witch, as unknowable as his previous targets. And yet, he found himself hanging off her next words. He needed to know why he wanted her so suddenly,. Maybe she would have the answer.

“You remind me of him.”

It didn’t register, at first. And then it did.

“You’re just like him, in fact. So serious, so clever, all dry-witted and beautiful. I want you because I want _him._ ”

Death gods didn’t have feelings. That was what Shikamaru had always believed. Until recently, he hadn’t realized it wasn’t true. He had to admit it now. External stimuli, like the sensation of heat, the bite of cold, the taste of orange, the butterfly kiss of a girl… all of it made him dizzy. But her words held a new feeling all together. One similar to the tug of their string or the onset of the needs and desires Shikamaru had came across in the past day. _Internally,_ something hurt.

“Ah,” he said, and a grin as mean as demons fell across his face. “Of course. I should have known.”

Temari placed a hand on his cheek, turning his face toward her. She looked at him with such pity. It was sickening.

“The difference is he knew I couldn’t die. And you’re a death god. All you can think about is how I should.” She leaned forward, the suggestion of a kiss on his cheek. “But I’m not sorry.”

She left him sitting in her living room, his unbeating heart lead in his chest.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter of the double update! Hope you enjoy!

Shikamaru reminded himself he wasn’t the kind of death god who dwelled. So as soon as the  _ feelings _ came, he shoved them aside, finding a kind of understanding at his center. It made perfect sense for Temari to be flirting with him if he seemed so much like her dead boyfriend. It explained why she wasn’t scared of him in the way the previous Gambler had been, why she was fickle and funny and fierce and bold. He couldn’t be upset about that. 

So he turned his attention around. Turned it to the practical. As he always had, being a god of death.

For a few hours, Shikamaru wandered around the house, looking for what he could use. He tampered with things, his will a guide, setting furniture askance and undoing fire alarms. If Temari wanted to burn so brightly, perhaps he could help.

After eating up as much time as he could, his frenzied work came to an end. There was only so much he could skew. While Gambling, he had to be more plausible than ever. It was only once Temari’s time was up that the rules became lax. She could die of a heart attack, for all he cared. Nevermind her being twenty and perfectly healthy. He’d do what he had to, freak accident or not.

A bang came from nowhere. It echoed throughout the house and Shikamaru started. He’d found himself a seat on the counter, trying to pick up another orange.

“Fuck!”

The sound was muffled, but unmistakably Temari. Shikamaru smirked, wondering if she’d slipped on the loose stair he’d pulled leading down to the basement. He walked to the landing, looking down. 

Surprisingly, Temari was coated in blood. Unfortunately, it was not her own and Shikamaru frowned as she got to her feet, glowering at the step that’d fell sideways beneath her. “You’re such an asshole,” she said. “You think I’m going to die by falling down the stairs?”

She squinted. Shikamaru gave a shrug. “You did almost trip and die the first time we met.”

“Asshole.”

“Witch.”

Temari came up, her tank top a mess of red and her jeans stained so dark they were black. Shikamaru frowned at the basement door behind her.

“Don’t even think about it. You couldn’t get in there if you tried. I have so many spirit wards around that door you’d go crazy trying to get within three feet of it.” 

“Spirit wards. A new addition?”

“Possibly.”

She brushed past him, a frigid antithesis of her usual burning self. Shikamaru wondered if it’d taken as much out of her to admit he reminded her of her boyfriend as it had been for him to process it. For a second, he tried to look at it from her side; answering so honestly and bearing so much. It was a classic case of the hurt versus the one forced into doing the hurting--it was a lose lose situation for all parties involved.

Not that Shikamaru was hurt.

Temari limped down the hall, into her room. He followed automatically, sitting on her windowsill once again. The sun was high in the sky by now, but it still illuminated her walls in flushing orange and curt shadow. His eyes trailed the design, until it led him back to Temari. She’d stripped in front of him again. She was in a bra and underwear, both stained that brackish red, and immediately Shikamaru turned away. Had they not just had a… what was it? A fight? A confrontation? Something about being too intimate. Shikamaru tried not to remind himself it was his fault for coming into her bedroom in the first place.

“I’m going to show you why I have to stay alive, death god Shikamaru.”

Shikamaru’s resolve was immediately forgotten. This time her back was to him as it never had been before, long and lean and covered in a sheen of blood. In the center of her spine, a tattoo jumped out, dark as an open wound. 

“It means love,” Temari said. “It’s a seal. If I die, then the seal breaks, and my brothers life is forfeit.”

The stupidest question in the world fell off Shikamaru’s mouth, his surprise apparent. “Which brother?”

“Gaara, idiot. If I die then my youngest brother dies too.”

“You said it’s a seal. That… holds his death?”

“No. It’s a seal holding a demon. It was bonded to my brother the moment he was born, killing both my mother and father in the process. Before things went any further, my uncle Baki managed to severe the bond with a seal--to some extent.”

Temari moved, weary. Last night had taken more of a toll on her than she was letting on--magic was finite, after all, and she’d used a lot of it. Not to mention whatever she was doing in the basement. It seemed a trial and a half, considering her current state. “Some of the demon remains, by the way. Not enough to give him any kind of ability, but enough that he’s a right jackass more often than not.”

She said it lightly, but Shikamaru knew better. A demon baby brother. A dead boyfriend. A death sentence. Temari had more on her plate than he knew and he almost,  _ almost  _ felt bad when she opened her drawer for a new shirt, finding a giant poisonous tarantula, half the size of her head and spindly as it was thick. Temari screeched.

“Asshole!” 

Well, maybe Shikamaru didn’t feel so bad after all.

\---

For the rest of the afternoon, a series of near comical near deaths occured.

There was a sort of delight in watching Temari fumble, tripping over herself to avoid his kills. In one instance, the stove was mysteriously left on. Gas poured into the kitchen, gathering in a a space until, suddenly, the spark clicked on. Lucky for Temari, she smelled it from the living room and managed to contain the air at the last second. When the explosion blew, it blew in a small ball above the stove, damaging nothing (the scorched underside of the cabinets didn’t count).

At another turn, Temari narrowly missed falling through the porch on the way to water Gaara’s succulents.

“They’re one of the only things that keeps him calm,” she explained, just as her good foot crashed through a broken board. She screamed in alarm and, somehow, kept the porch from falling apart altogether. A sweat broke out across her brow as she gathered all the wind she could muster. If she hadn’t done that, well… Shikamaru recommended she store the power tools somewhere else. Under the porch really wasn’t a good idea.

Again and again, the surprises unfolded, until Temari threw a bucket full of ammonia at him.

“Are you kidding me?” she yelled, staring at Shikamaru and the bucket in frustration. “I can’t believe you swapped my water with ammonia. How did you even do that?”

Admittedly, that one wasn’t plausible. He’d known Temari was going to try and bleach the blood out of her top and would probably dilute it with water and soap. He really, truly, honestly, was just doing his job by switching the bucket of water with ammonia, no matter how stupid that was.

“I could smell the that shit from a mile away! This has got to be the stupidest kill yet. It’s like you’re not even trying.”

Temari started laughing, shoulders shaking in disbelief. Except this time, as opposed to the time in the car, the laugh morphed into a genuine thing, sitting in the sand before her broken front porch. She flopped backwards, staring at the sky, laughing still. Shikamaru wondered if he’d finally cracked her.

“What am I going to tell my brothers about the disaster you’ve made of our house?” she said, her breath catching up with her laughing. “It’s trashed, Shikamaru. Utterly wrecked.”

Shikamaru shrugged. “Just doing my job.”

Her was expression unreadable, her outline bright. Shikamaru thought again to their encounter on the couch. Her legs around his, the flutter of her lashes and heart. It was enough to have him feeling something again. Discomfort. Desire. He turned away.

The sun hadn’t begun setting yet, but it was nearing the time that Gaara and Kankuro would be home. In fact, he was sure he could spot a car in the distance, rolling toward them now. “You know what? I don’t want to explain it to my brothers. I’m tired. They can survive for one night without an explanation.”

“Didn’t they survive last night without an explanation?”

“That’s besides the point. And, also, last night I didn’t  _ willingly _ leave them. So let’s do it tonight. I’m not abandoning them, just skipping out for a bit and besides I’ll leave a note. It’s Saturday tomorrow anyway.”

Temari got to her feet, walking up the porch steps. She maneuvered around the broken boards and through the now-screenless-door way, secure in the knowledge of her newly destroyed house. But at the last minute, her shoe caught onto the hallway rug, tossing her full force to the floor.

“The rug?” she yelled, aghast. “The rug! Are you fucking serious?”

For the first time in what must have been forever, Shikamaru laughed. He laughed almost as hard as Temari had, the action digging into his gut like a punch. Temari stared at him. He knew she’d most definitely never seen him laugh like this, if at all.

Catching his breath, he pointed at her accusingly.

“Oh no, witch. That wasn’t me. That was all you.”

Temari’s mouth opened.

“That’s fucking stupid.”

Cheeks flushing pink, Temari scrambled to her feet, straight backed and chest out. As if she’d never done such a fucking stupid thing. As if she’d never accused him of trying to kill her with a rug.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! I'm not posting at some godforsaken hour of the night for once! Crazy, right? Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy this chapter. It was one of my favorites to write!
> 
> Also, as a side note, I'm beginning my next shikatema fic <3 It will be, of course, fantasy, but with a bigger world this time. If you have anything in specific you wanna see in the next fic as far as characterization or characters themselves, drop me a comment and I'll see what I can do <3

“I still don’t appreciate you following me around, you know. It’s bad enough that you watch me change. You need to drive out to the middle of nowhere with me too?”

Shikamaru glared at Temari from the passenger seat, bored with this line of thinking.

“Maybe you should be more conscious of who’s in the room before you start undressing. And you invited me on this little drive, so don't start with that shit.”

"Fair enough. However, as for my room, it’s _my_ room; why should I be conscious?"

She had a point. But he ignored it and stared out the window, the day fading to dawn and the dawn to night. There were no clouds out, not the barest suggestion, and one by one the stars peeked out through the dark. They shone like beacons. They paled in comparison to Temari. And _godsdamn_ her death outline. How was she maintaining it?

“Are you trying to kill someone?” Shikamaru asked, abrupt, finally frustrated enough to.

Temari raised her eyebrows. “Why would you ask that?”

“We’re past trading question for question, I think.”

Shifting in her seat, Temari shook her head. “I am definitely not trying to kill someone. I think the whole point of this Gamble is for me to bring something to life.”

“And how’s that going?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

As a matter of fact, Shikamaru would’ve liked to. He wanted to know why she was so desperately guarding her notes and her work and probably coating herself in blood in order to summon up a deer. It seemed ridiculous. Overkill, if you wanted to be ironic. But her life was on the line as well as her brothers and Shikamaru didn't know anything about life. Maybe this was what it was.

“Fine. At least tell me where we’re going,” he sighed.

Now, her shifting was in discomfort. Her shoulders tensed and her lips pressed thin, the full of them flashing in Shikamaru’s mind as he recalled their encounter that morning. She had such beautiful lips. “Promise me you won’t spirit yourself away.”

Shikamaru frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

“Promise me. Swear it like you swore before, only don’t lie this time.”

Shikamaru winced internally. So she’d picked up on that. Foolish of him to think otherwise, when he’d so easily picked up on her lie to Tsunade. Two days and it seemed they knew each other a little too well. By sunrise on the day after tomorrow…

“I swear it on the Laws of Old.”

“Good. Now, don’t freak out. We’re going to his grave.”

Immediately, Shikamaru tried to will himself away. But because he’d sworn on the Laws of Old, there was no way he could and so he remained stuck in the godsforsaken car with a witch of a woman.

“You’re sick, you know,” he spit, an anger rising. He hated it. Hated it more than any of the feelings yet, because he’d banished everything about the subject earlier that day. How hard was it to just keep these insipid human emotions at bay? “I’m a god of death. I’m actively trying to kill you. And yet you insist on breaking the Laws of Old, pushing your depraved fantasy of your boyfriend on me, trying to--”

“I told you not to freak out! And you- He’s freaking out,” she said to no one, someone.

“I’m not ‘freaking out’ here. This is a valid reaction, witch.”

Temari’s face had darkened. A silence descended swiftly and Shikamaru deliberately did not think about the fact that he was a hypocrite for actively trying to kill Temari and also wanting, in some sick way, to break the Laws of Old as well. He wished he’d never let her touch him, bribe him. It was a vicious cycle that'd started as sudden as a storm. He had to break it. He had to. Didn't he?

They drove for well over an hour. Into the middle of nowhere, where no one could hear her scream, where there was nowhere she could run. Temari must have known better, fraternizing with a death god, but Shikamaru figured they were both well past rationality.

The truck jolted to a halt. “We’re here,” she said and kicked open the driver’s door. She didn’t get out. Instead she sat, mustering up something in her chest. It broke in a single breath. “His name was Daiki.”

Shikamaru started, the name grating. “Daiki?”

“Yes. And it’s my fault he’s gone.”

She hopped out, slamming the door behind her. Twilight was balancing itself on the horizon, leaving just enough light to see by, and it took Shikamaru a sort of courage to get out and follow Temari into the desert. But he managed it and they walked. And walked. Until, a few hundred yards away, they came upon a grave. A slab of concrete, unexceptional in every way. No name engraved, no flowers adorned; just a tomb to mark the end.

“Why is he buried out here?” Shikamaru asked. He was blunt, tired of this, not knowing when it'd really begun. Was it in the shop that day, when she asked his favorite animal? Was it before that, when he made the Gamble and noticed the color of her eyes?

He’d never noticed the color of someone’s eyes before. Just the glasses, that one time, long ago.

“It’s where they found his car.”

Temari crossed her arms, a sweater over the t-shirt she’d put on to replace her bloodied tank top. Her shorts were denim, revealing long legs and warm thighs.

Shikamaru turned his gaze to the grave. “You mean they never found the body?”

“No,” she whispered. Then, louder: “You have to understand, I’m not some weeping widow. We weren’t married and we weren’t planning on spending the rest of our lives together. He was just some boy that I thought I loved.” Temari huffed. “He was so smart, Shikamaru. Abrasive, but so smart. Sometimes so much so that he was dumb. And he was quiet, too. But the thing was--he had little drive to do anything. There were things to do, much to see, and he wanted nothing to do with it. I was fine with that. But then it got complicated, you know?”

“Stuff happened. Life kicked us in the face and his uncle got shot by a band of thugs on an account of mistaken identity. And it was like it opened his eyes. Daiki wanted everything after that. He wanted that life that'd been taken from his uncle. Which was understandable. In fact, I was glad--I'd always hoped he'd find that motivation. To, well, live and breathe and see. But... he wanted to move, too.”

“I couldn’t move, of course. I have my brothers here, my shop, my whole life. He’d come to Suna when he was ten, so he’d always been the new kid, the outsider. Leaving for him would be effortless. He’d talk about it so often, going back to the city, getting out of this town, leaving, leaving, leaving. Leaving me behind, too.”

“And I’m not saying I was feeling left out or forgotten. I knew Daiki too well. He was just focused, as he often was on his games and his puzzles. But my life wasn’t a game or a puzzle and I told him to get out after one too many times. I wanted him gone. I loved him and he wanted more than me and wasn’t willing to wait for my brothers to be out of school. So I told him to get out.”

Temari wasn’t crying. But her eyes weren’t cast onto the grave anymore, her gaze instead upward, reaching for the heavens.

“Shikamaru… he left. He packed his things and left Suna and he hasn’t been seen since. He never made it to the city. His car was found right here and his body never recovered. It’s been over a year.” A laugh weaker than famine split the night air. “I never even properly broke up with him.”

The dark stretched between them, in time with the pull he felt. She was no longer glowing so brightly, her outline quenched by the dismay of her tale. Shikamaru had never comforted someone before and so all was silent but for the shifting of sand and the distant rattle of a snake.

Finally: “It’s not your fault, idiot.”

Temari started. She glanced at him, surprised.

“What?”

“I said it’s not your fault. It’s no ones fault. You each wanted different things, neither of you communicated, right? So he chose to leave. The facts are all there. It was no ones fault.”

The string pulled taunt.

“Ha. Funny. Seems like something Daiki might say.”

“And she was twelve, actually." Shikamaru swallowed. "The girl with the glasses. She bet she could beat me at a game of strategy and she lost.”

“You bet against a twelve year old?”

“It was a Gamble. I was obligated. She was a prodigy and you know you can't stake a gamble on any small thing. It has to be big. Meaningful.”

“I know. Poor girl.”

“Yes. Poor girl. I killed her by giving her a consolation prize. It was a bar of chocolate, peanuts on the inside. She was deathly allergic. I threw her epipen across the room.”

Temari’s breathing stopped.

“And that’s what being at fault for someone’s death is, Temari. It’s not kicking them out of the house or breaking up. What I did was murder and you’ve murdered no one. ”

The moon had risen, the twilight long passed. Shikamaru lost track of how long they stood by the grave. Time passed differently in the dark. It shifted like the sand and it wasn’t until Temari turned to him that he realized how cold and late it’d become.

_Only two more sunrises._

“You said you’ve never killed a child,” she said, voice flat.

“I swear on the Laws of Old that I hadn’t before her, and I haven’t since. I never wanted to see that kind of fear in someones eyes again. I never wanted to Gamble again. And yet, here we are.”

Temari studied him. Shadows sliced against the planes of her face, painting her in a picture of restlessness. She walked to him and took his hand and kissed it.

“You don’t remember the names of your victims,” she said. “But you remember them, don’t you?”

Shikamaru nodded. He’d come to terms with that long before he’d been sent to kill Temari. Man, woman… it made no difference.

“Death god Shikamaru,” Temari whispered, “I am going to win this Gamble. I will win. You remind me of my love, but I am not an idiot. I’ve loved people before him and I’ve been with people since and you remind me of him, but you are not him.”

A shiver crawled it’s way up Shikamaru’s spine.

“And you’re much too cold to be Daiki, trust me," Temari continued. Like a lazy day, a smile touched her lips. "Not to mention, I don’t think Daiki ever held a job as important as guardian of death.”

She turned his hand to kiss his palm. Her light remained dim, but it did not flicker out.

Together they walked back, hand in hand. Temari climbed into the bed of the truck and took Shikamaru with her, laying down under the pinpoint stars, pathetic against the softness of her light. There was a blanket there, haphazardly thrown before they’d left. Curling beneath it, Temari pressed against him but did not prod, did not kiss and touch and wander. She simply leaned into his side and slowly but surely fell asleep.

Shikamaru wasn’t sure how she did it. It must’ve been something learned from the years living in the desert. Because to him, the grooves of the truck were unbearable. The space between them, huddled though they were, was worse. And Shikamaru was certain that if he weren’t a death god, he’d have bruises in the morning.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the lateness! School is about to start back up and I was at a welcome weekend for my college the past two days. It's been chaos and utter hell, so I apologize again.
> 
> Okay, I'm uber, uber nervous posting this one! It gets a little spicy and I'm not used to writing that kind of stuff. If anyone has any tips or tricks or a short critique to help me out on that, I'd love to hear! Thank you all for supporting me and being so understanding. Happy reading! <3

Death gods did not sleep and yet Shikamaru slept. And when he woke to the sun rising in the sky, a painful grate of an alarm, he found Temari awake too. 

Except, something was wrong. 

Her face was pale, drawn, a restrained panic like a sunburn on her brow, in her cheeks. Her entire focus was on the other end of the truck bed and Shikamaru watched sweat trail down her neck. He followed her gaze.

There, a rattle snake coiled around Temari’s leg, thick as a thief.

“Don’t. Move,” Temari breathed, her lips unparted.

The rattlesnake hissed and Temari held her breath and Shikamaru swallowed, hard. It was no ordinary rattlesnake. It was a rattlesnake, appearing the same as any other would, but it wasn’t the same. To the marrow of his falsified bones, Shikamaru knew that it was a one bite, one kill kind of creature not of this earth. 

Shikamaru felt something new. A sort of shame. A kind of guilt. He hadn’t deliberately put that snake there, but he knew it like he knew the smell of rot--he was responsible. Death was a vice and it wasn’t letting go just because Shikamaru had...

Shikamaru willed himself away. The promise he’d made the night before had been fulfilled and so he was no longer restricted in his movement. He appeared at the end of the truck. It happened so quick, so smooth, the snake didn’t seem to notice. Thankfully, Temari was accustomed to his little tricks and she didn’t bat an eye--she kept hers trained on the death trap before her.

A hundred different scenarios ran through Shikamaru’s head. All of them ended in Temari getting bit, out here an hour and a half away from any sort of hospital. He thought of their Gamble, how he could end it right here, another win in his pocket and another soul damned. Because that was the risk. That was the deal. Temari didn’t know it, no human, no witch, no being alive could possibly, because it wasn’t revealed in even the Laws of Old. Only death gods alone knew the true consequence of losing a gamble. 

Shikamaru’s mind whirled. When things died at a death god's command, they were sent into the ether. What that was, Shikamaru didn’t know. It could be heaven or hell or whatever afterlife a person needed in their time after death. However, when Gambles were made and lost, there was an equivalent consequence to the winning reward of remaining in the living world. See, you wouldn’t just die if you lost the Gamble. No. Rather, once dead, there was no place for you to go. Ghosts were born, damned to wander the earth forever more. 

It was a miserable existence. Shikamaru hadn’t seen one in a long while but he remembered the last time he had--a lost, decaying skeleton of someone's former self, wandering aimlessly among the living. It was as if they didn’t know they were dead. They asked and begged and pleaded with the bodies around them, hoping, wishing, desperate to be seen.

He thought of Temari as one of the damned. But it was unthinkable. And Temari’s seal, sure to wither and die would unleash its own kind of hell on her little brother and all that entailed. It seemed like too much. Was he allowed to bend the rules of their Gamble like this? If he didn’t want her to die like this, could he defy his unconscious decision? Before, during the storm, in the house, he’d simply failed to kill her. To deliberately save her was a whole different story.

The snake rattled once again, and this time it sounded like the hiss of life, the drop of change into an empty well. What was Shikamaru to do? What was he to do?

It was at that exact moment Temari decided to what _she_ wanted to do. Ever so carefully, Temari reached her hand out. Shikamaru should have known she would be the first to react, the first to attack even if she didn’t have a plan. Or maybe she did. She’d lived in the desert far longer than he.

“I can’t help you,” Shikamaru breathed.

He felt obligated to say it. But he hadn’t really come to that decision just yet. He only said it because he wanted--no, he  _ needed _ her to know he was still trying to do his job. He was still trying to do right by his name.

“I know,” Temari whispered. Her hand drifted towards the snake, stopping only when it gave another rattle of warning. “You’re just doing your job.”

His leaden heart cracked.

Temari continued. She stretched forward after the rattling had stopped, aiming for the head. Something dull rang in Shikamaru’s mind, an afterthought of an afterthought. It was how you were supposed to hold snakes. As close to the head as you could get. That way, their fangs would be clamped shut, and they couldn’t twist to bite you. The question was would Temari be quick enough to do that?

Slower and slower, her hand inched, the careful descent of a paper on the wind. She was holding herself up by her other hand, making not a sound as she propped further up. Until she did.

It happened too fast. Temari’s supporting hand slid by a fraction, the noise a shift too small to hear. But the snake heard it, or felt it, rather, and then there was the rearing of its head, the bearing of its fangs, dual daggers in the morning light. Its muscles coiled and the snake struck, a flash of black and sand. Shikamaru could smell the poison. Acidic. Sulforus. Choking.

And then he could feel it, too. Searing, like Temari’s touch, but worse, much, much worse. Shikamaru found he actually couldn’t compare the two as he grabbed the snake by its neck and pulled it away from Temari, its teeth still sunk into his arm. The moment the creature’s tail left her skin, however, it half morphed into Shikamaru's hand and he had to shake it before it landed with a _ thunk  _ outside the truck. The burn of poison caused him to double over. The snake slithered away.

“Shikamaru?”

Temari scrambled out of the truck, and, somehow, the panic in her eyes had intensified. Now that she was no longer at the mercy of the rattler, she seemed to be at the mercy of Shikamaru’s hunched figured, his body folded into itself. The burning hadn’t stopped and a wave of nausea came crashing down; he began to shiver. Sweat broke across his brow and he squinted up at Temari.

Her hair was falling out again. A round of gold and a wonder of brightness, beautiful as it was frightening. Shikamaru was frightened, he thought. He’d never looked at a girl this way before.

“You’re burning up. I didn’t think--rattlesnake poison--put your hand below your heart,” Temari stuttered, her hand against his forehead. She lifted his head up, hands callused against his skin. “You’re a death god! You can’t die from a snakebite!”

A imitation of a laugh escaped from Shikamaru. 

“You’re… not… wrong…”

“Then why does it look like you’re dying?!” She lifted Shikamaru up, wrapping an arm around his waist in a strikingly similar fashion to the night of the flash flood. She propelled him forward, towards the passenger seat.

It was with impressive strength that she lifted him, practically vaulting his body into the truck. Immediately Shikamaru leaned over again, shivering. His forearm was swollen now and he was only slightly surprised to see red, bright as rubies, drip onto his pants. He wore the same tattered jeans he always wore. They never changed, always the same, a cut that moved with his body. Now, he supposed, he’d be stuck in them forever, accented by a splash of blood.

“Shikamaru, what should I do? What am I supposed to do?” Temari snapped, her panic making her angry. She shoved his shoulder--the last thing he needed--and demanded once again that he tell her what to do. “I can’t get you to a hospital within thirty minutes and can--no one can see you anyway!”

Shikamaru coughed violently, and more jewels spilled onto his pants and the carpet of the truck as the wound leaked.

“Oh my god,” Temari said, balling her hands into her hair. One of her buns fell out completely, and she started out the truck window in bewilderment. Her keys were in the ignition, the truck rumbling beneath them. “I can’t believe I killed a death god. I thought-- I read all the books and they never said--”

Shikamaru let out a weak another laugh.

“Don’t  _ laugh _ , you asshole! You’re dying! Or--or, wait, is this another one of your stupid games?” She was as frustrated as she was concerned, but not impractical. There had to be something else, right? The thought made Shikamaru laugh again, before coughing, once, twice, three times. The nausea had stopped, which he thought was a good sign, and he leaned back into the seat. 

“You… stupid witch…” he breathed, and Temari scowled in bewilderment. “Death gods... can’t die.”

“Then why are you acting like it? Hey, I said put your damn hand below your heart!”

Already, Shikamaru was beginning to regain feeling in his arm. The cold began to subside, leaving only leftover shudders that wracked through his body. They came rapidly at first, before slowly grinding to a halt. Throat thick, he turned to her.

“Because we can be weakened, Temari. We’ll go through the stages of whatever hurt we face, far faster than a human, and then we’ll be alright.”

Though his muscles were sore, all effects of the poison had passed, his arm back to normal. This had happened once before, when he’d contracted a horrible case of measles he’d given to a boy his age. It had been stupid, idiotic, just as the parents who’d not vaccinated their kid had been. But it had also let Shikamaru know that though he lived in a world of grey and outlined death, he could still be brought low.

It hadn’t happened in so long, he’d almost forgot how similar it was to feeling the... _other_ things he’d been feeling. He looked at Temari and his throat closed up.

Temari let out a breath of astonishment. She looked like she wanted to hit him.

“You goddamned death god,” she said, and then grabbed his collar and kissed him.

Shikamaru felt the Law break the moment their lips touched. But it was such a far away crack, a twig in the wind, that compared to the sudden, wonderful tug that went through his stomach, the Law was nothing at all. He didn’t try to resist. With unerring certainty, he pushed himself closer, holding tighter than the coil of any snake.

It was desperate, at first. Their teeth clacked with such force that it was as unpleasant as it was pleasant. But before he had time to linger on the mechanics, Temari shoved him back in his seat. She crawled on top of him, brighter than the morning sun, and Shikamaru instinctively leaned them both back. He was quick with the lever, and they were both so smooth, hips rolling and limbs aching and it felt more natural than law breaking.

“God, I’ve wanted this since the moment I laid eyes on you,” Temari breathed between kisses, trailing them down his neck. “I’ve wanted you so, so bad.”

Shikamaru wouldn’t lie about this. He hadn’t known what to make of Temari at first--only that she was stupid, invoking a Gamble, and brave. But as he followed her, got to know her, began to want her, he realized the slightest of interactions made him feel as he’d never felt before. Somehow, the world was sharper with her in it. Intoxicating.

So he said nothing, only groaned as she sank her teeth into the tender spot between his shoulder and neck. Buttons loosened and shirts lifted, his hand flitting over her bra and hers eager at his waistband. Molten heat gathered low in his stomach, and Shikamaru couldn’t find his breath as she sunk to her knees on the space between him and the glovebox. How was there so much room in this truck?

She kissed the skin above his jeans. Her nails fire, the top of her head the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.

“H--hello? C-co--cop--yTemar--i?”

The radio burst to life, cracking with static and sound. Shikamaru had forgotten that the engine was running. Both the witch and the death god stilled, ripped from the slice of time they’d carved.

“Fuck,” Temari bit. She leaned her head backward and sighed. “That would be Gaara.”

Shikamaru had never wanted to hear less about someone’s little brother. 

Temari rose, crawling back on top of him and laying her head on his chest. “You don’t have a heartbeat,” she muttered. Then the radio was cracking again and Temari was rolling off him entirely, irate. “Copy,” her voice distorted into the microphone,“what is it, Gaara?”

“Some--one--here for you. Y-you sho--home--now.”

“Who is it, Gaara?”

“I-I--t--Baki.”

Temari inhaled sharply. “Baki?”

“Y--e-”

“I’ll be right there.”

Temari jammed the radio back into place, looking for her shirt near Shikamaru’s feet. She pulled it on and they both buttoned their jeans, righting themselves. Shikamaru averted his gaze. Now that they’d been separated, a deep wrongness settled, something like panic or paranoia.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Shikamaru said, quiet. There was a long pause.

Once again, Temari grabbed him by the shirt, yanking him toward her. Slow as syrup, she kissed him, sweeter than, too. Then she pushed him back into his seat and snorted. “I don’t give a damn. Shikamaru, I’m going to win this Gamble, and when I do, you’ll see that we can do whatever we want.”

Shikamaru didn’t reply as she shifted the gear into drive and pulled out of the sand, spinning back to the road.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saturday! Hope everyone is having a great week. We're nearing the end of this fic and I just wanna say I have a surprise for ya'll soon in regards to it. Thank you again to everyone who has commented and bookmarked and given kudos <3

“Actually, you were right. I am going to kill someone. Kankuro, to be exact.”

A quarter mile out, they could see the cars. A scattered plenty surrounded the house, like birds of prey, waiting to spring. Temari frowned hard at the solo cups littered beside the wheels, the easy pickings. The evidence of a party since past.

And inside, the house was a mess. Though it was partially Shikamaru’s fault, with his catastrophic failed kills, there was no explaining away the food stuck to the ceiling and the rivers of alcohol running through the halls. A lamp was busted beside the couch. A vase had been smashed atop the TV. And then there were the bodies--teenage bodies strung across couches, sprawled across rugs. Each was huddled beneath enough blankets and pillows to supply an infantry, and yet some still preferred other, smaller bodies instead. The quiet of the morning was interrupted by a symphony of snores and hiccups. Temari stood before them all, a conductor.

“So he had a party. Big deal,” Shikamaru said, stepping around an empty bottle of Fireball.

“Yeah, but he had a party  _ without me _ ,” Temari hissed. “That’s why I’m going to kill him.”

Shikamaru tried to picture Temari getting swept up in the current of adolescent hormones and tequila shots. She was responsible and vicious when it came to her brothers, but wasn't it likely she had a different side, the one that shone through in her laughs and smirks? It wasn’t weird that she probably liked to party, right?

“Kankuro--Kankuro!”

Temari prodded one body in particular, a snoring pile of a boy. His hair, which had been hidden beneath a cap the few times Shikamaru had seen him, was dark and awry, purple eyeliner everywhere. It wasn’t until Temari physically shook him awake that he propped his head up, squinting into the light. “What the fuck, Kankuro?”

“Hey, sis.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t ask. At least ask next time, okay? And where’s Gaara?” Oddly enough, Temari kept her voice low, as if to not wake the other party goers.

“Too many questions. Head hurts.”

“No shit. How much did you drink?”

“Questions. Hurt--”

Another groan came, a hand reaching up and around Kankuro’s bare torso.

“S’whas going on?”

Another boy, one with messier hair and sharper teeth, poked his head out from behind Kankuro’s shoulder. Purple eyeliner was all over his mouth and Shikamaru tried not to think about what, exactly, he’d had to do to get it there.

“Kiba!” Temari hissed, swatting Kankuro on the arm. “ _ Kiba _ ? Are you kidding? His sister is going to kill me!”

“C’mon. A party ain’t a party without Kiba, sis.”

Temari threw her hands up in frustration, about to rail on him once again. But she stopped short when her younger, slighter brother appeared in the doorway. He had rings under his eyes, though it was impossible to tell if they were from make up or lack of sleep. Gaara glared, clearing his throat.

“Baki’s in the kitchen,” he grumbled, and Temari went white.

“Shit. Great.”

Kankuro immediately pretended to go back to sleep; it was clear he didn’t want to deal with whatever Temari had to deal with, while Kiba actually went back to sleep, nuzzling himself closer to Kankuro’s neck. Temari walked with stiff shoulders out the living room and into the kitchen. Her teeth were set on edge. And as soon as Shikamaru saw the man on the counter, he set his too.

See, he was just a man. An ordinary man, with a shaved head and a straight nose and skin a few shades lighter than Temari's. He looked like he’d been raised in the desert. Looked like he could crush a boulder with his bare hands, as most desert folk could. But it was exactly that that made Shikamaru so apprehensive. The man’s hands--calloused, bruised--were not only strong, but red. Stained. It told Shikamaru immediately that he had killed in cold blood at least once in his life. Those with red hands always had.

(The irony of Shikamaru's judgement was far from lost on him. But humans weren't meant to play executioner. That was his job, not theirs.)

The man grunted. “I’m unimpressed, Sabaku.”

At first, Shikamaru didn’t understand who he was addressing. He was too busy assessing and reassessing. It wasn’t until Temari cleared her throat and replied that Shikamaru realized-- _ of course _ . Sabaku. A last name.

“It’s too bad I’m no longer in the business of impressing you, then.”

“You’re not a child anymore, Temari. These parties, these games, this Gamble...” he looked pointedly at Shikamaru, who raised one brow in surprise. "It's ridiculous."

Ah. So he could see death gods, could he? It made Shikamaru only more wary. Something tugged at the corners of his mind, like an itch, a spot missed on a painting.

“You must be Baki, Temari’s mentor,” he said, and didn't let his unease show. His expression was impassive, tone lethally bored.

“I see," Baki said. "You’ve been fraternizing with him, too.” The murderer hadn't deigned to respond to Shikamaru. He talked pointedly at Temari, Temari only. Which was fine. It was good, even. Bound to make whatever conversation about to ensue that much more interesting. Perhaps that much more dangerous.

Shikamaru's mind went into overdrive, and with that same impassive grace, he walked past Temari and Baki, brushing the older man as he went. Baki visibly tensed as he did and Shikamaru bit back a smirk. He maintained his dispassionate look and deposited himself on a stool at the other end of the kitchen, tilting it forward precariously. He propped his head up on one hand, absentmindedly rolling a stray orange with the other.

Baki’s eyes flashed.

“Temari Sabaku, you haven’t dared--” he spit, but before he could continue, Temari cut him off.

“You’re right, Baki. I’m not a child. I’m twenty-one and I can make my own decisions.”

“And you’re deciding to forsake both you and your brother? I came because I heard the seal calling. It knows the danger you’ve put yourselves in.”

Temari slammed her hand on the counter.

“I’m  _ saving _ us from danger.”

“By putting yourself in the thick of it? Had you died when he came for you, I could have taken the seal and placed it on someone else. Kankuro, perhaps. But now that you’ve Gambled away your very soul, there’s no way I can transfer it. The demon will be unleashed and it will be a bloody war trying to seal it again.”

Temari gritted her teeth. “Then it’s a good thing I plan to win the Gamble.”

“You think you can beat him? Death gods are death gods, Temari. And when they Gamble, they Gamble to win. Don’t think he’ll spare you just because--”

“He won’t spare me. I’ll spare him."

“Big talk from such a small girl.”

“Baki,” Temari cut, her body vibrating with rage. “You raised us. You trained me. But when I say get out of my house, get out of my house. Go!”

“Foolish girl--”

“I said,  _ GO!" _

Temari threw her hand out in front of her, a gust of wind a hammer that knocked Baki off his chair. The man jerked his head up in surprise, his own rage barely contained. But rather than retaliate, he simply rose, careful to his feet. He walked out the kitchen and into the hallway, both Temari and Shikamaru following closely.

At the doorway, he paused.

“I’ll be waiting two miles from here. When you lose, I’ll be here to clean up your mess, ungrateful child.”

He walked out and did not look back. Something eased in the pit of Shikamaru's stomach.

“Ohhh, shit.”

Temari whirled around, to find several heads poking out from the entrance of the living room. Said heads popped out of sight and whispers could be heard as the unwelcome guests scrambled. Temari scowled.

“Alright, everyone else, out!”

With bowed necks and shrunken shoulders, a parade of teenagers made their way into the hallway and out the front door, some sheepishly clutching clothes to their chests while others tiptoed out bare footed. In total, there were perhaps fifteen party goers, which Shikamaru figured made up most of the teenage population of the town. Then, at the very end, two familiar girls stumbled out the living room.

“Sorrrry Temari,” Ino whispered, Sakura clutching her arm. They both smiled apologetically and Temari rolled her eyes, shooing them. They both hesitated at the door, turning back.

“If you need any help, just let us know. I don’t know what you and Baki were talking about, but it didn’t sound good. We love you, Temari.”

The phrase struck Shikamaru like an iron across the face.

Temari gave them a stony look, sighing. With a smile heavier than the world, she nodded her head.

“Love you all too. Don’t worry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Shikamaru flinched. New feelings had bubbled up and he did not like them. Not one bit.

Once the party goers were gone, Temari walked into the living room. Kankuro was up and digging through a pile of blankets. He procured a shirt and threw it on (backwards) before glaring at Temari. “You don’t get to be mad at me for having a party when you’ve been having one yourself.”

Temari snorted.

“Bargaining for my life is not a party, trust me.”

“But it is something you should’ve told me about.”

“Maybe. I had my reasons, Kankuro.”

Kankuro was looking for something. Something in Temari’s face, in her ocean eyes. Perhaps, Shikamaru thought, he was hoping for an explanation or a sign that it was all going to be alright. But he found nothing. Temari’s younger brother pinched the bridge of his nose and didn’t say anything for a long while. When he finally looked up, he held an empty grin.

“You always do, sis. Just don’t leave me and Gaara alone. Those friends of ours only heard bits and pieces, idiots who don’t know what’s up, but I know. So don’t leave us, okay?”

Temari gifted him the barest smile back.

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

Kankuro retreated from the living room entirely. Temari and Shikamaru watched him go. Just as the door to his bedroom was closing, Temari seemed to realize something.

“Oh. Oh, hell no. You’re cleaning this up!”

\---

For a while afterward, Shikamaru sat while the two siblings picked up, throwing food and drink out and creating a pile of clothes to redistribute back to their owners. They were close to done when Temari threw Kankuro a pair of keys “Take Gaara and go get cleaning supplies. We ran out earlier and I want this place wiped down, not just picked up.”

“Are you telling me you want me to drive all the way to town just to get lemon breeze Lysol wipes? Temari, I barely passed my written test. I almost got my permit revoked the last time you took me driving. You’re telling me to do something  _ illegal _ .”

Temari shrugged. “Not my problem. I want Lysol wipes.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“You can take the clothes back to our friends while you’re at it.”

“Fuck.”

As if by saying his name, Gaara appeared at the doorway, a black hoodie on despite the heat. “Do I have to go?” he grumbled.

Temari nodded. “Yes.”

“Kankuro’s right. You are an idiot, Temari. I can’t believe you’re putting my life in danger for the sake of yours.”

As if taken back to an hour ago, Temari stiffened, an anger like the one she’d shown Baki taking her. She clenched her jaw, trying to look at her youngest brother levelly. So he’d heard everything.

“I’ll be in the truck,” Kankuro muttered, and left the room.

Shikamaru thought about staying. He’d been with Temari for so much of the past three days, it felt odd for him not to hear another of her conversations, another bit of her life. But she’d explained just yesterday the trials and tribulations it took to raise Gaara. Just yesterday, she was showing him a tattoo as dark as the bond between them.

For once, Shikamaru left not because he’d been hit by a wave of feeling or unease. He left on his own accord, to give Temari a moment of privacy with her brother and a demon.

\---

Something felt wrong, not looking actively for ways to kill. It was an unbalanced sensation, and by the time Temari walked Gaara out of the house, ordering him into the truck with Kankuro, Shikamaru felt woozy on his feet.

_ Just a few more hours _ .

The dizziness faded when Temari took his arm, the truck long gone.

“Come on. Let me show you how I’m going to win our bet.”

\---

In the basement, there lay a dead deer.

It was one of the desert, the small kind, with twisting horns and sleek limbs. It was perfectly preserved and Shikamaru could admire the care put into keeping it so. 

“How did you get this down here?” Shikamaru asked, brow raised. As he’d thought before, he’d been with Temari for a while now. How had he missed her dragging a carcass through the halls?

Temari walked to a shadowed corner, and knocked on a wooden panel.

“A few false boards. I open them up and they lead right out into the desert.”

Shikamaru nodded, impressed. “I’m surprised I didn’t hear you drag it in, regardless.”

Temari tapped on the wall next to the board, but she was expressionless, an imitation of her usual confident set. “All the other boards are soundproof.”

He tried again. “And the seals on the floor. You intend to bring the deer back with those?”

Next to the deer was a series of concentric circles, black in the candle light. From the way they were smeared, there was only two ways Shikamaru figured they could’ve been put there. Either with paint or blood. He was inclined toward the later, considering Temari’s drenched state yesterday.

Of course, he understood none of what was written. It was a series of spells calling on life, a field he was far from practiced in. But they were beautiful. Shikamaru would give them that much.

“Yes,” Temari said. “I wanted to show you because I wanted to prove that I’m going to win. No matter what rain you bring down or what snakes you wrap around my legs, I’ll win.”

He didn’t quite understand. “You took down all your spirit wards just to show me that?”

Temari turned to him further, walking until they were just inches apart. The memory of her skin against his, the grind of her hips, the hitch of his breath… their thread pulled, but something was wrong.

“I took down the wards because I’m going to prove everyone wrong, Shikamaru,” she said.

He shook his head, still unsure of what she was trying to tell him. Temari’s mouth pressed thin and her demeanor changed further. Usually, her brightness was a result of her surety, her intent. Like something that could kill. Now, it shone with an edge he’d never seen before. Something was… off. The thread felt… dirty, with muck or tar. He wanted to clean it. He wanted to fix and mend and help.

“Everyone thinks I’m going to fuck this up and get everyone killed,” she said. “Baki thinks I’ll die. Gaara thinks I’ll die and even you, who saved me, thinks I’m going to die--and don’t try to deny it! You’re still trying to kill me! I know it!” Halfway through her proclamation, she began shouting, eyes wide. She pushed him and made her way to the deer.

With a viciousness that made Shikamaru flinch, she kicked it.

“Temari--”

“I had to take the spirit wards down because I needed to show you that I’ll win this damn Gamble. You can’t stop me. See the life circles? I’ve done it right. I’ve done it all correctly. And once I’ve put the wards back up, you won’t be able to stop me.” She was unhinged like he’d never seen, yelling, anger like irons. Shikamaru cringed.

“First you break the Laws of Old, and now you cheat them,” he said, not unkindly.

“I don’t care. I’m going to win. I have to win, I--” there was a choking, a gasp, similar to a sob. When she turned back to him, her eyes were filled. Tears of frustration. Tears of desperation. “--No rain and no snakes and no nails will stop me.”

She was repeating herself now, as he repeated the picture of her. All Temari’s concerns, all her life, her body, her body against his. He thought of the hell he’d made the last few days and the brother with the tongue made of poison. Everything built up, a tower of wobbling antiques. Was he going to catch them when they fell this time?

He approached her, slow, and grabbed her by the hand. He kissed her palm. “Stupid witch,” he laughed, a feather of a sound. “You should know by now that I never make the same kill twice.”

He felt the tension drain from Temari’s body. She wrapped her arms around him, and he wrapped his around her.

“Shikamaru,” she whispered into his shoulder, “I was going to go with him. My boyfriend. I was eventually going to follow him to the city and Baki was so furious he told my brothers. And ever since then nothing’s been right.”

Shikamaru stared at a crack in the board across the room. He hammered his leaden heart back together.

“So I have to prove to everyone that I’m capable of making sound decisions. That I won’t fuck it up like I did last year. And I will cheat if that’s what it takes.”

“I know. I know.”

When she looked up at him next, the wild had been calmed, if ever so slightly. She kissed him, quick, soft.

And that was when Shikamaru knew he’d never be able to fix their thread, no matter how badly he wished it so.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go!!! We're real close to the end now and I can't wait to share it with you all <3 Sorry the chapter is so short, but I promise next week will make up for it. Happy reading!

That night, Shikamaru fell asleep once more. And this time, he dreamed.

If death gods weren’t supposed to sleep, then they certainly weren’t supposed to dream. Yet, he did anyway. 

He dreamt of Temari. Obviously. Of their time in the desert, laying under the stars for the whole universe to see. He dreamt that Temari had crawled on top of him then and kissed him how she’d kissed him in the front seat, and then they were in the front seat. The sun had risen faster than he’d expected. And though he was kissing her senseless, she was also dying under his arms. He pulled back in horror. The snake wrapped around her throat instead of her ankle, and it was the third sunrise since they’d made their deal.

She was dead.

He woke with a start. Night had fallen and he found himself twisting on the living room couch, a cool sheen of sweat across his brow. He sat up and put his head in his hands. This was wrong. This was all wrong. He’d made a Gamble, then he’d--

The floorboard creaked. For one insane moment, he thought he’d woken Gaara; him and Kankuro had come back hours ago, going to sleep soon after. But that was impossible. Gaara couldn’t hear or see him. Neither could Kankuro. Only Temari, who was standing in the entryway as if she’d been expecting him to wake at any minute.

“I forgot about something,” Temari whispered. She was tired, worn. Her arms were crossed like weapons. But she stood sure, her eyes clear once again; nothing like the glean from earlier.

“I thought you were going to hide until sunrise,” Shikamaru said. He couldn’t be heard but he kept his voice low anyway.

“I was, but then I remembered what I’d forgot.”

“You know if you don’t summon that deer back to life, you won’t win the bet. If I’m not the one to kill you, fate itself will. That’s what the Gamble entails.”

“I know. But you’re not listening. I said I forgot something.”

Shikamaru blinked.

“What?”

“You.”

She came forward with silent steps, grabbing his hand with a gentleness that was almost painful. She kissed his palm. Then the crook of his arm. Slowly, she kissed his neck until her lips were on his and he could feel heat emanate from her, familiar, now, as his own mind. And she was deliberate, placing her knee between his, pushing him down onto the couch.

“Temari--” he whispered, her tongue soft enough to kill. “Temari, what are you doing?”

Her heart hammered beneath this hand. His fingers were splayed against her chest, clawed, as if he could dig her heart out. Then it would be his, all his.

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Shikamaru.”

“Temari--Temari, we can’t wake your brothers.”

For the briefest moment, she pulled back, mouth parted in either anticipation or surprise. As if she couldn’t believe Shikamaru had remembered that she had brothers in the first place. She sat up. 

“You’re right,” she said, and smiled in the light of the moon.

\---

With a wave of her hand, Temari broke the wards to the basement.

“Don’t worry about the deer,” she said, kissing his neck as they descended the steps. They were nearly tripping over one another as they touched, stumbled, ghosts of themselves mingling. “I only have to say the words before sunrise. We have… plenty of time.”

Temari shut the door firmly and immediately gasped.

Shikamaru had taken it upon himself to pin her to that door, lifting her up so her thigh could cross his hip, their skin scraping, roaming. He growled into her neck.

“You won’t be here anymore when I win,” she breathed, voice catching. “I want all of you now, all of you.”

He sunk his teeth into the same spot she had that day, until he knew it was painful. Temari whined against him and he let go, kissing where a bruise was soon to bloom. He kissed up her jaw, back to her lips, sweeter than the morning.

“ _ If _ you win,” he said, and he could feel her smile against his mouth.

Temari shoved him back, sudden, abrupt, and he obliged. As if in tango, she came forward, footsteps more certain than. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him deep, deeper, like the bottom of the ocean, the core of the earth. Everything was so hot Shikamaru couldn’t see straight, and he led them to the cool of the ground. Sheets were piled in the corner and they tangled in them quick, harsh.

She was on top of him now and he groaned. If he didn’t have a heartbeat, how was blood flowing this freely, towards places he’d long since given up on?

Temari’s breath hitched, but she reacted accordingly. She rolled her hips, one long, slow motion. And Shikamaru strained for words, to describe how good it felt, how wild she was making him, and his brain was failing him, miserably. Shikamaru couldn’t find the deer across the basement when he tilted his head to the side, trying to absorb everything about her in every way possible. All he saw was Temari, Temari, Temari.

Clothes were wandering off, buttons torn and her shirt gone. He kissed the spot between her breasts and flipped them over, to kiss lower, lower.

For a single moment, as Shikamaru went down on her, he had a painfully clear thought: Temari was right. So right it hurt, and there was a physical pain in his chest as he realized it was a lose-lose situation-- if she won the Gamble, he’d move on to the next target. It would be as if he’d never met her. And if he won, she would be dead, and he could never taste her like this again.

He kissed between her, deeper. She was making those short, breathy noises, and soon Shikamaru was finished, given the go ahead to climb back up her body.

“God, how are you so good at that?” Temari groaned. “Show me more, Shikamaru. _More_.”

He kissed her behind the ear, on the jaw, again on her mouth so she could taste herself. Already, she was trying to lift her hips to his again, and Shikamaru felt another physical kind of pain, far lower down than in his chest.

_ Fine _ , he thought, desperately.  _ Fine. If I can only have this once, I’ll give her a lifetime in a moment and then take one for myself; I’ll give her more than she’s ever gotten. _

Zippers came down and jeans were shoved to the side. Skin slid against skin and there was as much biting as there was kissing, as much kissing as there was time. An infinity stretched between them, Shikamaru made better than good on his silent promise.

\---

When Shikamaru woke once again, he could sense the dawn.

It hadn’t broke yet--no sun had risen, no rays of light. But he knew they were coming, and he knew what was coming.

Temari was wrapped in his arms. They’d rolled the sheets to the center of the basement in their frenzy and now only a single candle flickered, a lone pillar in the dark. It lined Temari in shadow and gold, heat and an unbearable sort of sharpness. He’d taken her whole earlier and with only her presence she was taking him. It would make things so much harder in the end.

Her eyes fluttered open as soon as he thought it, awoken as if by the same feeling Shikamaru had--an acute attunement to the rise of the sun, a sense of the denouncement.

But as they drew waking breath, the witch and the death god simply stared, tracing the other in the low candle light.

“This will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Temari said, breaking the silence first.

Shikamaru didn’t know why he said it, but he said it anyway. “More difficult than losing the boy you loved? I think not.”

Temari’s expression didn’t change, but she shook her head.

“You don’t understand, do you, Shikamaru?" She rose, grabbing her jeans from across the room and pulling them on. They both went through the process of getting dressed and by the time they were finished, they had little time left. Temari took his hand again, and kissed his palm. “You don’t understand, but I’ll make you.”

Shikamaru shook his head. The sun was so close. It burnt so differently from how she burnt, and he grasped at straws. “There’s no time. You better raise that deer, witch.” He felt an awfulness creep up, one that had been building since he’d woke. With a shaking hand, Shikamaru pressed it against her face. He echoed her words.

“It will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to bear, parting from you.”

He thought he saw Temari blink back tears. But instead of leaning away to raise the deer, she leaned forward, making it so much worse. Death gods didn’t cry, but Shikamaru thought that he, too, was blinking back something.

And at the same time Temari told Shikamaru that she loved him, a quiet, ghostly “I love you, Nara Shikamaru”, the fangs of a rattlesnake sunk into her ankle.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Not only am I updating a day-ish early, I'm also doing a double update to finish out the story <3 I want to do this as a thank you to everyone who's stuck with me and read my first ever fic. I want to give a shout out to viiisenya and mari for taking the time to leave me wonderful, detailed comments on virtually every chapter! That kind of support means the world to me. Thank you to everyone else too!
> 
> So, without further ado... happy reading!

Temari sunk to the ground, gasping as she went. Shikamaru followed within the same second and together they collapsed on the floor.

Something horrible was happening. Shikamaru’s chest, his whole torso, was ringing with a pain more intense than the poison of a rattlesnake, worse than anything Temari had ever made him feel. Nothing he’d experienced as a death god was this sharp--this searing sky of a pain. Like a lake’s horizon, so defined it defied reason.

“What have you done, Temari?” Shikamaru choked, clutching his chest as he’d clutched her heart the night before. “What have you done?”

Temari wasn’t withering yet, the poison fast as it was, but she was shaking. A clear sweat formed at her temples. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was parted in anticipation.

“I told you, Shikamaru,” she said, “I’m bringing back to life a deer.”

“There’s no--there’s--,” he stuttered, the pain locking his limbs.

“Shikamaru,  _ you’re _ my dear.”

Understanding struck him, worse than the rushing through his bones.

“Temari--I--you and I--”

He could hardly breath, and Temari’s own breath was labored and she crawled toward him. With a strength he could hardly believe--though he should’ve known better--Temari stood up, gripping his arm and leading him across the floor. In a way too familiar than Shikamaru wanted to admit, she carried him to the false boards in the wall. Through blurred vision, he watched the ground beneath him, burning a neon blue; the life circles were coursing with ancient, searing magic.

“You brought me down here for this,” he laughed, weak, pitching forward as Temari began making their way up the stairs. Ahead, Shikamaru could see the dawn. But the sun’s rays hadn’t reached the sky, and the two tumbled onto the sand under the low hues of the lightening world. Shikamaru thought he could see the last of the stars in the distance, a glow of maybe one, perhaps two. He took a ragged breath and as he did it seemed the whole earth rattled.

Temari was on her stomach next to him, trying to prop herself up on her arms. He laid on his back, each individual grain beneath him like bullets through his shirt.

“Temari,” he said. “Temari, I’m so sorry.”

She collapsed, unable to support herself any longer. The sun was rising rapidly now. This close to summer, it demanded to be seen.

“You were just doing your job,” she muttered. Her voice was distorted by the poison and the ground. “And I demanded the right to Gamble, after all.”

Limbs were quickly growing stiff. Both hers and his.

“Temari,” he said again and there were tears streaming down his face.

“Don’t be such a crybaby,” she whispered.

Out of the corner of his eye, vision hazy as it was, he could see Temari continuing to shake. Her breath was coming out worse than his, a shuttering sound that only increased the twisting in his heart. Shikamaru thought back to all the signs, all the little bits of information she’d fed him over the past three days. All of it connected--all of it made sense. If only he’d paid more attention. If only he hadn’t felt so compelled to do his job, so bitter about the half truths. He choked.

“You lied to me. You said his name was Daiki.”

“Yes. I lied. Though, I did used to date a Daiki--you never liked him much. And you lied too."

"I--"

"You told me you never made the same kill twice."

Shikamaru made a sound that was half a sigh, half a gasp, and with every fiber of his being he wished he'd never told her that. He had to throw her off her game. Death gods weren't supposed to be thrown off and he'd thought only humans could be and yet here they both were, thrown off.

God, she was so beautiful. God, she was so smart.

“Did I really leave you, Temari? How could I?” he asked.

She laughed, barely audible. “Well, I drove you out.”

“You didn’t.”

“You’re an idiot. Also, I love you.”

As she said it the wind rose, sweeping and dramatic. It carried the first hint of the days heat on it. From afar, a bird called, a rock slid down the canyon cliffs, a snake rattled. It was all the same, but all so much different. They were the spell words. Her love was...

“You shouldn’t have chosen to bring me back to life, Temari. How will I live with the pain of killing you?”  His vision was clearing now, the pain still a restraint, a pulsing through his body. But Shikamaru was able to lock eyes with her now. Hers were drooping, lashes fluttering.

“You’ll… manage...”

“What about Gaara?”

“Didn't plan... on losing... but, you'll figure that out... too. You always were... good with… magic. Just ask Baki.”

“You’re not allowed to be this calm. You can’t be this calm--T--Temari--” he coughed, a rupturing lung, a true draw of air. "Why are you so calm?"

Temari forced her eyes open. Bags had rapidly formed underneath them, her ocean eyes now a swamp, the color leeching. The poison was working so much quicker than it should. The workings of a death god, through and through. 

“Because...  _ I love you _ Shikamaru. And I... know you’ll take care of… everything for me. Including my brothers. Tell them...I love them. And remember...  I love you too _. I love you. I love you _ .”

There was a banging, distant, somewhere in the house. As if the brothers knew they’d been referred to. Or that their sister was fading and fading fast. But with every repeat of the spell words, Shikamaru was realizing he was doing the opposite. The sharpening in his body matched the sharpening of his senses; the smell of the earth dense and chalky; the taste of his mouth, caught with the memory of Temari.

It felt like he was dying, but he knew he was living. His body was coming back to the earthly plane. He hadn’t realized death gods were dead themselves--no wonder Temari had glowed so brightly. She'd been planning to murder something already dead by bringing it back to life.

“Temari…” he said, once more, back arcing. “Temari.”

“Yes?”

And then the sun finally cut past the canyon, rays running across the sand in flushing gold. 

“I--”

There was a smile on the witch’s face as she took her last breath and a cry of agony as the death god’s heart beat once more.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter!
> 
> Also, one small, last surprise for you all: my playlist! I took the main song I listened to per each chapter and complied them (: My music taste is a little off but hopefully you all enjoy. Thanks again for sticking with me everyone!
> 
> https://8tracks.com/nahraa/the-desert-and-the-deer

The light was a shot in the dark, a point Nara Shikamaru did not want to face. But it grew more piercing with every passing second and soon, to his dismay, he couldn’t resist the call. It was too damn irritating. He opened his eyes. 

He immediately wished he hadn’t. A man was bent over him, a woman by his side, each shining a flashlight into his face.

“Oh my god, Tayuya, he’s alive!” one of the figures said--the man.

Shikamaru blinked. Again.

“Oh my god, boy, are you okay?” the woman asked.

Shikamaru tried to find the words to say he was and to please, please get that light out of his eyes, but at that exact moment he realized his throat was horribly dry. Dry as the desert. As if he hadn’t had a drink of water in… forever. What had he been doing and where had he been going that he was without brought water? Everyone knew that in the desert, you brought gas, a radio, and water with you. Unless it was monsoon season. Then you could catch the water.

He tried again, forcing words out that were scratchy, nails on a chalkboard. They were barely audible.

“I--nee-d--wa-at-ter.”

At least the man and woman weren’t  _ that  _ dumb. Immediately, the woman--Tayuya--scrambled to his side, bringing up a bottle to his lips. Water--fresh, cool--burned going down. But by the time it passed Shikamaru swore his throat felt better, and he began guzzling it in earnest.

The couple watched him intensely and now he wished, their flashlights finally lowered and not burning into his retinas, that they’d leave entirely. Or at least back up.

Then reason took over and when Shikamaru finished the water, he sat up fully, coughing, the surroundings spinning. He clutched his head--he had a headache, a migraine--and his limbs ached as if he’d ran for a year straight. Shikamaru only did what he had to to keep in shape; any more and he wound up like this. What was he doing that everything hurt so bad? He peered up at the couple.

“Where are we?” he asked.

The two exchanged glances.

“We’re inside a canyon, near Suna. It’s close to the city. You ever heard of Suna? It’s only a speck on the map and we’re tourists and we didn’t even know it existed--”

“Jiroboi, he asked where we were, not for a geography lesson.”

The man bowed his head a little.  _ Thank God _ , Shikamaru thought.

“I live in Suna. Of course I’ve heard of it,” Shikamaru croaked.

It came rushing back like a blow. As he said it, he realized he wasn’t supposed to be living in Suna anymore. Him and Temari… they’d had a fight… and he packed all his things, his heart heavy in his chest. He hadn’t really wanted to leave without her. But she was…

He shook his head. “Where’s my car?” he asked.

“We don’t know, hon. You’re kind of far up the canyon. We didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

Shikamaru squinted past them. It was day, and last he’d remembered, it was night.

“What time is it?”

The couple looked at each other again. “Three in the afternoon.”

Shikamaru frowned, then tried to stand up. They stood with him and the man caught his arm as he swooned, nearly falling to the ground again. He wasn’t used to feeling this weak, needing this help, and it felt odd. Something felt odd in general. Like something was missing. 

“Hey, woah, slow down there. Do you need help?”

Shikamaru wanted to say no. It was a drag to rely on other people. But, logically, he knew he needed help, and if he didn’t know where his car was, then that meant a whole lot of walking to get anywhere familiar. Better to stay with the tourists and pay them gas money for a ride… back to Suna? Or the city. 

There was a tug in his chest. Suna, then. He had to make things right with Temari before he stormed out completely. Not to mention, all his stuff was in his car, and again, he didn’t know where that was.

“Uh, yeah, actually,” he said. 

“You look like death, love. Let us take you to a hospital.”

“Uh... how about the clinic in Suna?”

Tayuya and Jiroboi were exchanging way too many glances. They shrugged. “Whatever you say, love.”

\---

Even Shikamaru had started when he saw himself in the reflection of the couple’s car window. His cheeks were gaunt, as if hadn’t eaten for days, and his eyes were hollow shells. It was unnerving. Just yesterday, he’d been...fine.

They arrived in Suna and as startling as his drastic transformation, was the town’s drastic feeling of unease. Something was tipsy about it and--was the grocery blue instead of green now? Had they painted it in the single day he’d been gone? He shook his head and walked into the clinic.

That was when he knew something was most absolutely, positively wrong.

Tsunade dropped her clipboard the moment she saw him. Her jaw hung open, and she whispered, a rasp: “Shikamaru, is that you?”

She strode around her desk and  _ hugged _ him. Oh, yes, something was wrong.

It wasn’t only Tsunade’s reaction. It was the fact that, in the waiting room seats, Kankuro and Gaara both sat wide eyed, staring at him. Not just Kankuro. Gaara, too. Gaara never reacted with anything but scorn, but here he was, staring like Shikamaru had grown a third eye. It was more emotion than he’d ever seen the boy express.

“ _ Nara? _ ” Kankuro hissed.

“Yes?” Shikamaru asked from around Tsunade’s shoulder. “What?”

“ _ Where have you been _ ?”

Shikamaru stepped back, away from the old lady, or the hag, as Temari so fondly called her. He glanced past her, counting the siblings. One, two… no Temari. Something froze within him. “Where’s Temari?” he said, sharp as a sun’s ray.

“That’s not really the question you should be asking right now--you’ve been gone for so long, Shikamaru, where--” Tsunade was holding his shoulders, shaking him.

“ _ What happened to her _ ?” he snapped.

It was Gaara that spoke up. “She was bit by a rattler. It’s bad.”

If his face had been pale before, it must have turned completely white. When Gaara said that something was bad, he usually wasn’t exaggerating. And a rattler was no small bite in the first place. Shikamaru shook off Tsunade with a viciousness that he hadn’t known he possessed; even her legendary strength couldn't stop him as he stepped around her. His heart was in his throat, the air gone from his lungs, his whole body tense. Guilt, worry, hurt, confusion. It ran through him as he burst into the back.

He couldn’t see her, hidden in the back behind a curtain. But he heard her, the rasp of her voice, as she talked. To someone. To Baki, he realized.

Something visceral wretched in his gut. And then, it was gone.

“--was foolish, Temari. Don’t make me repeat myself. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Tsunade patched me up fine. You don’t need to worry.”

“What if he doesn’t come back? I hope he doesn’t, in fact. You’ll pull another crazy--”

Shikamaru ripped back the curtain before they could continue. He didn’t particularly care about what Baki was saying--though something nagged at him, railing in his head. But he simply told himself Baki had always been an asshole and he’d never liked Shikamaru anyway. A little more rudeness wouldn’t hurt. If anything, he deserved it.

But all of Shikamaru’s ill will fell away when turned all his attention to Temari. Her cheeks were gaunt as his, the bags under her eyes stark against her waxy skin. She looked awful. But she was alive, and--and she was alive. That was all that mattered to Shikamaru. His cousin had once been bit by a rattler, and they hadn’t gone to a hospital in time. He was grateful Temari had. Beyond grateful.

“Temari,” Shikamaru began, “I’m sorry, I know I was a jackass, and I’m sorry, and if anything ever happened to you and I wasn’t there--”

“Shikamaru,” she breathed.

He came close to her. He barely registered that Baki had left. He sat on the edge of her bed, cupping her face with his hands. Shikamaru pretended his nails weren’t broken, his knuckles weren’t bruised. All he could focus on anyway was Temari, Temari, Temari. It didn’t matter what had happened. It didn’t matter where he’d been.

“Shikamaru,” she said again, and this time, it came out as more of a sob. Like she couldn’t believe it was him.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, repeating it, again and again, until Temari cut him off.

“Shut up! Shut  _ up _ !”

With both her hands, she grabbed him by the collar. Desprately--in a way he’d never seen her act--she brought his lips to hers. Kissed him. Kissed him harder than he’d ever been kissed, hard enough to hurt. Tears spilled down her cheeks and soon they were both crying, messy, salt and kissing.

She pushed him back.

“Never leave again,” she said, and wiped at her eyes. “Crybaby.”

He smiled, a tug at the corner of his mouth. Shikamaru shook his head and leaned in once more. He kissed her soft enough to be a sin.

“I won’t,” he whispered, and leaned his forehead against hers. “I promise.”

They were still, breathing in each others life. Shikamaru wasn’t sure what had happened. He didn’t know why people were asking him where he’d been. He did know that he’d made a mistake and that he was lucky the love of his life wasn’t dead.

“Also, Temari--”

His voice was thick. He gave that small smile again, the little tug, as he looked her in her ocean eyes.

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

And so, unaware, Shikamaru came to life.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic! Comments appreciated <3!


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